Earth Died Screaming
by Epimeliad
Summary: Three years after the Fall, John has begun to rebuild his life, and he's regained at least a semblance of normalcy. He has a job, a girlfriend and a new house, far from 221 B Baker Street. But then he begins to notice signs. Is someone playing with him, is he losing his mind, or could Sherlock actually be back from the dead?
1. Five Stages

**Chapter 1: The Five Stages**

"I thought it was going to be over by now," John admitted to his therapist, looking down at the floor.

"What makes you say that?"

"You did. You said that. After depression comes acceptance, you said. _You_ said that."

John leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. Twice a week for soon three years, and he was now beginning to be able to talk freely about Sherlock's death.

"John, the Küber-Ross model is a theory, not a schedule. The stages don't need to come in chronological order; it's not a defined sequence. It's just a way for you to be able to be somewhat prepared for what emotions you are going to feel."

John didn't say anything. While he knew himself to have actually reached the acceptance stage for maybe a year ago, he was still taken aback when he one day found himself in denial of the whole thing happening. It felt like a regression he just couldn't emotionally afford. A week later, it could be anger or bargaining. These stages lasted only for a few hours, but were enough to throw his whole day off track.

"I woke up this morning, so sure that he was just waiting for me to do… _something_, and then he'd come back, if only I figured it out. And I mean, I'd do anything…"

"What stage does that sound like?"

"Bargaining," John muttered under his breath.

"What did Olivia say about it?"

John immediately felt guilty. "I didn't say anything to her."

"Why not?"

For a second, he actually considered telling the truth. He had been honest with everything else in therapy, and when he'd made that decision he realised that it actually helped. He had actually managed to rebuild a decent life. But for some reason he just couldn't bring himself to admit that he hadn't told Olivia about Sherlock. It had begun as a lie through omission, but now that they were living together, the lie seemed to have snowballed to the point where he felt that he should at least tell the truth to his therapist.

"She's a worrier," John said instead, deciding to keep the lie going. "And she had a big presentation at work, I didn't want her to worry about me when she needed to focus on other things."

"Do you think you are protecting her by not telling her about your feelings?"

"Yes."

No, it wasn't that. He didn't think he needed to protect her from anything. But he wanted so badly to be normal, to adjust back to a normal life, a life without war – any war. And if Olivia thought him to be normal then the goal seemed so much closer.

"We've talked about this, haven't we, John?"

"Yes."

"Trust issues don't go away overnight. You have to work on it. You trusted Sherlock, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did."

"Well, then try to trust Olivia the same way. Just try to."

John didn't really feel that the comparison of Sherlock and Olivia was a very apt one, but nodded in agreement nonetheless. It just wasn't the same; you couldn't just compare two people like that, not when the only common denominator was that he happened to have shared a flat with both of them.

"Same time on Thursday?"

John looked up at the clock. Was it five already?

"Sure," he agreed and shook the hand she had reached out in the same way as always.

The bargaining was the worst part of it all. It was the most difficult feeling to shake. At five separate occasions John had seen Sherlock fake his own death, or at least fake to be dying, and it always ended when John did something to tie the ends of the case together, to set the stage for Sherlock to make his victorious return. It had taken a lot of time and therapy to get him to abandon the idea that this was one of those times.

He had left Baker Street in an effort to rid himself of that feeling that everything was just a puzzle, waiting for him to figure it out. It also felt like it was Sherlock's place more than it had ever been his, so he often found himself sitting in the dark, waiting for Sherlock to return. Therapy really had helped him a lot, he decided when he thought back on those darker days when he couldn't really function.

It did still feel weird though, when the cab turned south instead of north, heading to Brixton instead of Baker Street, even though he had now lived in Brixton longer than he had lived in Baker Street.

_I researched you._

Sherlock's voice rang through his head as the cab rode over the Themes. It did that sometimes. He tried to block it out and leave it on the other side of the river, but it haunted him all the way home to Lambert Road.


	2. The First Sign

**Chapter 2: The First Sign **

"Are you home already?" asked Olivia from the kitchen when John closed the door behind him. She was washing up, but turned the water off to come and greet him in the door.

John kicked off his shoes and hung the jacket on its peg before giving Olivia a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek.

"I thought you were going to the shops after work?" she asked when she noticed that he hadn't brought any bags.

"Oh, sorry, I completely forgot. I've been a bit preoccupied today."

"I'll say. You acted weird all morning." She smiled warmly and gave him another kiss on the cheek. Suddenly he felt that it was the best thing, not to tell her about Sherlock. This was what he wanted, to move on with his life as though the time with Sherlock had never happened.

"What's for dinner?"

Their Brixton flat wasn't nearly as nice as the one he had shared with Sherlock on Baker Street, but it was starting to feel like home. He no longer reacted at the smell of the place when he walked through the door. Not that it was smelly or anything, it was just that it hadn't smelt like _home_ in the beginning. It had smelt like when you went to a friend's house: not in any way unpleasant, just strange and unfamiliar. But Olivia had really helped to make it feel more like home. During the year John had lived there by himself, he had never bothered about pictures on the walls, curtains or things like that. But when Olivia moved in, it felt like he'd gotten a reason to really get his act together. She had made him establish a façade of normalcy, a façade that was now beginning to be dismantled as his actual return to normalcy was built up behind the scenes.

She did the sweetest things that really made the place feel like home, probably without even thinking about it. On the worktop next to the sink where she was doing the washing-up, she had put a wok they never used and filled it with the unripe tomatoes from the balcony, insisting that they would ripen in the sun, even though it was the end of October. She'd insisted on covering the balcony with tomatoes and strawberry plants, the same way she had covered most of the windowsills with potted flowers. She liked gardening, and John found it endearing.

One window he had asked her to leave empty, though. It was the one by the kitchen table, overlooking Lambert Road and the tarmacked playground of the school on the other side of the street. This had become John's spot. There he would sit and appear to watch the world go by, while he was actually far away in his mind. As long as he every now and then commented on something or other going on in the street below, he was left to his own devices. Olivia got worried if he shut himself in the bedroom, so he didn't do that anymore.

"Are you working tonight?"

"Sorry. What? Working. Yes," John stammered, brought back harshly to reality.

"Do you want me to make you a sandwich?"

John blinked, forcing himself to focus on the real world. He had completely forgotten the tea, which was now stone cold in front of him.

"Yes, that'd be lovely," he said and tried to muster a smile, but couldn't really manage it.

"Are you that tired, darling? Are you really sure you should go to work if you're so tired?"

"I'm fine," John insisted. "I just need a power-nap."

He got up and tipped the tea out in the sink on his way to the sitting room, where he stretched out on the sofa.

The power-nap turned into a proper nap, and Olivia shook him awake at seven, with a cup of tea in her hand. She really was a sweetheart. John didn't know when he had had to make a cup of tea for himself in the last couple of years. He drank it so quickly that the burns on the roof of his mouth still hurt when he put his white coat on over his scrubs and entered the A&E of University College Hospital.

Molly had said that she was sure to be able to find John a job at St. Bart's, but John hadn't been able to go back there, not since Sherlock's jump. He had, with the help and support of his therapist finally accepted that it was a jump and not a fall. But he still couldn't imagine seeing that building and walking that pavement where _it_, no, not _it_ – the suicide, John corrected himself – had happened. No, it was actually his therapist who had set him up with this job. Apparently she knew someone on the board. Damn, she had really gone out of her way to make sure John got his life back on track.

The job wasn't exactly exhilarating, but at least it was more exciting than work at a clinic. Mondays were usually the worst, when he shared shift with a triage nurse who especially disliked him, and he gave her a loathing look as he passed. She was the reason his Mondays (and Wednesdays and every other Friday, for that matter) felt like a constant line of sutures. Today she had really outdone herself though, by sending through a woman with heartburn.

He was muttering under his breath as he contemplated all the horrible things he wanted to say to her (but never would) on his way to the break room, when something caught his eye. It was something he hadn't actually seen, but rather just reacted to, like when a single word sticks in your mind after just surveying a room and you can't tell where you saw it. The door to the trauma room was still swinging slightly from whoever had gone in, and John moved closer, just in time to see the EMC-team give up the attempts to resuscitate the young gun-shot victim on the gurney.

John edged into the room when the initial commotion had calmed down, and the EMC-team moved on. There was something about the dead man in the middle of the room that seemed so desperately familiar, he just couldn't place it. For a second, the cropped hair made him think of the army, but he could feel that it wasn't right. Also, it did not look like this guy had been in the army. It wasn't the bomber-jacket he wore over a band t-shirt and jeans. John even leaned forward to look at the shoes, which reminded him of the time he had closely examined a pair of sneakers with Sherlock, looking for poison. At the thought of Sherlock, John knew immediately what it was that had caught his attention. The scarf! He had barely noticed it before, but now it felt so obvious. It was exactly the same as Sherlock's had been; he would have been able to pick it out anywhere. What were the odds? He even let out a small laugh. How many times hadn't he had to pick that damned scarf up from the floor, or the chair, or the bathtub? When he reached up to touch the fabric, he realised that his had was trembling ever so slightly.

As he felt the soft, worn fabric against his fingertips, he felt almost as though he was touching Sherlock. He immediately took a step back. But the thought was already planted in his head. Touching Sherlock. He remembered with horrifying clarity the last time he had done that: while trying to take the pulse of a limp, dead wrist.

"Keep it together, Watson," he ordered himself under his breath as he felt his knees wobbling dangerously under him.

"Are you feeling all right, John?"

It was one of the nurses. They'd spoken before, but John couldn't remember her name. Hell, he barely even remembered his own name at the moment.

"I just…" John heard himself stammer. "I thought I knew him. My mistake"

He managed to keep it together until he got to the break room; managed to keep the images that were burned into his brain at bay until he closed the door behind him and turned the lights off. But then he was in hell.

However hard he tried, all he could see was Sherlock's dead, pale eyes as the blood trickled down into his face. Oh god, the blood. The blood running down the cracks in the pavement, Sherlock's hair sopping wet with blood, blood pooling on the ground.

John could feel his body grown numb and give way under him, but for the short moment he slid down the wall, all he could see as the darkness closed in on him was the sight of Sherlock falling face-first towards the street below, and as he slumped down to the floor, what he heard was the sickening thud of a human body making contact with asphalt after a long fall.


	3. Baker Street

**Chapter 3: Baker Street**

John was given Tuesday off. The collapse was put down to an anxiety attack; it could have happened to anyone. It hadn't happened to anyone though, it had happened to John, and he had felt very uncomfortable when Olivia had come to pick him up around five in the morning to put him to bed as soon as they got home. She pottered around, tucked him in and brought him a tray of tea and biscuits. The sounds were calming and reminded him of safety, but when she left for work and the flat fell quiet, John just couldn't go to sleep. He just kept seeing that scarf, and he had the burning feeling that he was missing something.

John drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep all morning, with weird dreams filling his head. One moment he dreamt of Sherlock dead on the pavement, one moment the scarf wrapped around the neck of the young man from last night, one moment Sherlock smiling superciliously at something that was just _so_ obvious.

At nine, John decided that going to sleep was a hopeless endeavour, and that he'd better get up instead. But the feeling that he was missing something important kept pestering him. The scarf was the exact same one as Sherlock's, down to the thread-count. It was very expensive, and it hadn't exactly matched the rest of what the dead man had been wearing…

"John Watson, you stop this right now," he very firmly told his reflection in the bathroom mirror. "Stop it. This is not a case. You are not looking for clues. You are not Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes is dead."

The words echoed slightly between the bathroom walls. The words were sad but true. God, how he wanted them not to be true.

"Stop it!" he hissed at his reflection through gritted teeth.

Acceptance. He had reached the stage of acceptance. Sherlock was dead, and he had come to terms with it. This was no way to behave when one had accepted the definitive nature of death. The world of normal people – the world John now inhabited – was not the battleground he had found it to be at Sherlock's side. The world was just a normal place, where bad things happened to normal people.

A shower usually cleared his mind, but after twenty minutes in scalding water, his mind wasn't any clearer, although he was cleaner than head been in a while. A plan was forming, festering in the back of his head. Baker Street. He had to return to Baker Street. He tried to rationalise the plan by arguing that seeing the flat empty (maybe even someone else lived there now?) would confirm Sherlock's definite deadness. However, there was another plan as well, one he wouldn't allow himself to think about, that maybe there were some clue in the flat. Clue to what? That Sherlock wasn't dead?

_Dust is eloquent_.

"Stop it," he grumbled to himself as he started down towards the kitchen.

John didn't really know what was happening to him, and he didn't particularly like it. He tried to decide how he could possibly explain what he was doing to his therapist, but it was almost like an out-of-body experience, and he could just helplessly go along for the ride as he got out in the drizzle and walked along Brixton Hill towards Coldharbour Lane. He watched, almost in disgust, how he got onto the number 2 bus. Damn it… was he really going through with this? In spite of himself he dug a hand into his pocket to make sure he still had the key.

As the bus drove across the river, he started feeling thankful that he had taken the bus, something he almost never did. But this way, he didn't have to articulate where he was going, which would probably have made it feel more like an active decision to go back to Baker Street. This way, he just happened to be brought there. He couldn't help where the bus was going.

The rain increased as the bus drove north. As drizzle turned to deluge, umbrellas were unfolded that added an unexpected splash of colour in the grey autumn day. Yellow. Pink. Red and white stripes. Sherlock. John twisted uncomfortably in his seat to see if he could get a better look, but it had just been a black and dark-blue striped umbrella and the colour-combination had made him think of Sherlock. The scarf. _That _scarf.

Just stop it, please, he pleaded with his mind.

He got off at York Street and walked the rest of the way. He hadn't brought an umbrella, so by the time he could make out Speedy's, the rain was beginning to soak through his jacket. He quickened his step.

Well, the key still worked, he concluded as the front door opened and looked into the hallway that was so familiar, but still so very different. Mrs Hudson had had the stair repainted, and the wallpaper changed. He couldn't blame her. What with all the destruction Sherlock had brought with him wherever he had gone it was a miracle that the whole building hadn't needed extensive renovations. John smirked a little at the memory. It was a luxury he had started enjoying around a year ago: fond memories of Sherlock. It didn't hurt, it wasn't weird and it was a normal part of grieving, according to his therapist. _This_, however, was not a normal part of grieving, he chided himself as he started to climb the stairs.

He reached out to knock on the door to what had once been _their_ flat, a door that he couldn't recall that he had ever knocked on. A part of him wished that someone would open, that someone would have moved in there and made the place their home. It would have helped him realise that life moved on. That way, the flat wouldn't just be a mausoleum to Sherlock Holmes; it would have been made into just a flat, like the one he lived in in Brixton.

No one opened the door, though. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he again reached for the key and turned it in the keyhole. If someone was living there, Mrs Hudson must have changed the lock; anything else would have been irresponsible. But the lock clicked open, and John took a deep breath before pushing the door open.

John let out a faint whimper of pain as he took in the flat that had once been his home. It smelt just like home, in a way that the flat in Lambert Road would never smell. Nothing was changed. Mrs Hudson had most likely not been in there since before the funeral, but she had tidied up a bit. The chemistry kit was still packed down in clear plastic boxes on the kitchen table.

A thick layer of dust had settled over every surface. No one had been in here for years.

_Dust is eloquent._

Yes, and this dust spoke volumes. No one had entered this room in a long, long time. Probably not in three years. John felt physical pain when he realised that Sherlock was in fact dead, that he wasn't coming back, that the last couple of hours had just been a trick of his mind. A very painful trick that had ripped open wounds he had been so careful to patch up, and that he had thought were healed.

John's knees were starting to feel wobbly again, but he didn't want to sit down, not here, not in his chair, not in Sherlock's chair, not in the couch. He looked around until he found a kitchen chair and collapsed onto it. He buried his face in his hands. Why had he exposed himself to this?

When he raised his eyes again, he noticed something in the bookcase. To the untrained eye it looked like a leather-bound book, but John knew exactly what it was. He got up and moved across the room, pulling it out from between the books. It was a black leather case, very expensive, like most of the things Sherlock owned, that John unzipped with the ceremony he had never before attributed it. Inside was the tourniquet stolen from St. Bart's, a needle and a small flat-bottomed phial with a 7% solution of cocaine, probably mixed three years ago. For some reason, this underlined the absence of Sherlock. Though he had never approved of his drug habit, he would have given anything to find the case gone, or at least the small phial gone. Just some indication that he might be alive.

As it was now, he didn't really understand why he had gone to the flat. He sat staring at the opened case in his lap. Did cocaine go off? The thought flashed through his mind before he could stop it. He'd seen Sherlock do it hundreds of times.

Stop it, John.

Sherlock hadn't been noticeably affected by the stuff, it seemed to be like taking a cigarette for him. But yet he kept doing it. It must have done something to him.

Close the case, John.

He picked up the tourniquet, and before he could really understand what he was doing, he brought it to his nose and sniffed the nylon. The smell made his stomach knot up painfully. Half an hour earlier, he would not have been able to even conjure up the idea of Sherlock's scent, but when confronted with it, he realised that it smelt exactly like Sherlock.

Put it away, John. Stop this.

He dropped the tourniquet back into the open case, disgusted with himself. How the fuck was he going to be able to explain this to his therapist? He would have to come three times a week for a year, probably. He had to get out of there.

He quickly closed the case and returned it to the bookcase before quickly hurrying out of the flat, making sure to close and lock the door before rushing down the stairs and back out in the rain.

* * *

**A/N: **Massive thanks to all the people who read, followed, favourited or reviewed! It really warms my heart; you guys are what makes this fun! I'm a review slut, and I don't care who knows it.

Stay tuned for Chapter 4: The Second Sign, which will be out on Saturday!


	4. The Second Sign

**Chapter 4: The Second Sign**

It was Wednesday afternoon and John's shift in the A&E had just ended. Then why was he still there? He'd been asking himself that for a while now. For the last hour, John had been sitting in the break-room at a table in the corner, and watched how doctors and nurses had finished their breaks and gone back to work. John didn't have any work to go back to now, so he just sat there.

"What's that you've got there?" asked Mark, an anaesthesiologist he quite liked. They had been out for a beer a few times.

John stared at him blankly. The sound of his voice had been like the sound of people talking when your head is under water.

"That thing, you've got there," he repeated, articulating a bit more. "You've been playing with it all day."

Mark pointed to John's left hand. He was right. John hadn't even noticed it himself, but he kept fiddling with the tourniquet from the flat. It hadn't been before he'd gotten home that he'd realised that he had taken it, rather than put it back in the case. He considered lying and putting it back in his pocket, but then he remembered that he was a doctor and it wasn't especially odd for him to be seen carrying a tourniquet.

"It's just… I found it on the floor earlier." He put it up on the table, trying to appear like it was just something he'd found.

"That's not one of ours, is it?" Mark said, picking it up.

Don't touch it, John wanted to snap at him, but realised that what with the collapse two days ago, yelling at co-workers for touching medical supplies might not be the way to go to appear stable.

"No, I think it might be one of the paramedics dropped it."

"Hmm."

Why was he so tense? He was almost on edge, prepared to leap from his seat if something turned up. This wasn't healthy. He hadn't been sleeping. Two hours in total last night. He hadn't gone to bed before three in the morning, and then woken up rested at five. He hadn't eaten anything either. He'd made himself breakfast, mainly out of habit, but forgotten to eat. At lunch he'd bought food, only to feel that the bacon butty almost disgusted him.

"I don't know what you and Olivia are doing this weekend, but Hanna and I were thinking about getting a couple of people together. Do you know if you're busy?"

"Busy? Yes, very," John said without listening. He then saw that this wasn't the answer that was wanted. "Nah, just kidding, mate. No plans that I know off."

He didn't know that he'd been waiting for it before he saw it. An ambulance just pulled up to the A&E with both lights and sirens. He leapt to his feet.

"John, where are you going?" Mark called after him as he hurried through the break-room. "John, you're not on call!"

John didn't even pretend like he was listening, he was running as fast as he could through the halls, and then down a flight of stairs, through another corridor until he pushed the door for the A&E open. The paramedics had just wheeled the patient into the trauma room. This time, John didn't have to go inside to know what had caught his attention. He knew exactly what it was he had been looking for; he just peeked through the door to confirm what he had seen from the break-room. The coat. He knew that coat.

He waited outside, waiting for the team to come out and move on to the next room. But when they came out, they had the gurney with them. John couldn't hide his surprise.

"Attempted suicide," said the nurse, who mistook John's quizzical look. "We're taking him to the ICU."

The scarf, the coat, suicide. There just was no way that these were coincidences Not when it happened during two consecutive shifts. It wasn't that the coat and the scarf were only similar: they were identical. Someone was trying to send him some kind of message. A small part of his brain was still trying hard to get him to return to reality, trying to get him to realise all the progress he had made during the last three years, asking him if he really wanted to go through all of that again. John managed to block the voice out until it raised a very valid point. If someone was trying to send him a message, that someone was sending a message with dead bodies. Well, depending on what happened to the suicide, one dead body and one severely injured. Suddenly a very unexpected voice turned up in his head as the voice of reason.

_One day we'll be standing round a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one that put it there. Because he's a psychopath. Psychopaths get bored._

Even to himself, John couldn't deny that this was true. He had seen Sherlock get very bored indeed. And while psychopath was not the term John would perhaps have used, after hours with his therapist he had come to terms with that Sherlock had some sort of anti-social personality disorder. But could he really be capable of…

Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! The reasonable part of John's brain was kicking and screaming against this idea that Sherlock might be alive, putting up a final struggle against the other part of him, the part that was growing more and more dominant by the minute. The growing part of him was starting to see the world as he had long ago, in the war and with Sherlock. He was beginning to see the battlefield again.

John didn't want to go home. At nine, he was still pacing the streets in the middle of the city, just walking, as though he thought he might bump into Sherlock by coincidence. But it wasn't only that. He didn't want to go back to the flat, to Olivia, to the normal world. It was too normal, too boring. He turned down Park Lane and walked another lap around Mayfair, the third of the night. Suddenly, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out as quickly as he could.

_Could be dangerous_.

It wasn't Sherlock. Of course it wasn't. It wasn't even a text. The picture of Olivia flashed on the screen, and for a moment he thought about declining the call, before dutifully pressing the 'accept' button.

"Hi, honey," he said, trying to sound casual.

"John, where are you?" Olivia was worried and furious. And now she probably heard the sounds of the street as well. "Are you on your way?"

"Yeah," John lied. "I was just about to call you." Why stop at one lie?

"Mark called me. He told me you had been acting odd all day. He wanted to make sure that you'd come home alright, because apparently you had just run out on him when he was talking to you."

"Something came up," John said, being very effectively pulled down to the normal world he didn't want to be a part of anymore. "But I'm getting a cab right now, I'm on my way back as we speak."

Surprised at himself, that was exactly what he did. He waved down a cab, got in and asked for Lambert Road. He had hoped that doing the right thing would feel better than it actually did. He didn't want to go home, and now he couldn't even comfort himself with the thought that it wasn't as though there was anything else going on. Probably never again. Something else _was_ going on, he just needed to figure out what.

* * *

**A/N: **Stay tuned for Chapter 5: The Cynic


	5. The Cynic

**Chapter 5: The Cynic**

Olivia was clearly itching to confront him. All of the night before, she'd been too relieved that John had come home in one piece that she hadn't said anything, but now, the morning after, it was clear that she was just rearing to go. John was sitting at the kitchen table, looking out on the street, where the kids were heading to school. He didn't know exactly how long he'd been sitting there, but the sandwich in front of him had started going stale.

"What?" he finally snapped, annoyed at the hovering. Olivia was biting her nails, huffing and pacing, seemingly begging him to ask what was wrong. "You clearly want to say something."

"What's going on with you, John?" she asked, sounding almost helpless. "You haven't slept in two nights, you don't eat anything… Clearly you're bothered about something, why can't you just tell me?"

John had to admit that he hadn't thought she'd notice that he wasn't sleeping, although he had pretty much understood that she'd notice that he wasn't eating. Especially when the uneaten food was right in front of him.

"I'm not hungry," said John. He really didn't want to talk about. What could he say? 'I think the best friend I've ever had, who killed himself three years ago, might not be dead after all, and he's sending me messages through dead people at the hospital? Oh yeah, didn't I mention that I for almost two years lived with another man and together we solved crimes as a hobby?' John was felt pretty sure that it was a conversation that would end badly.

"Is it the war?" she asked carefully.

For some reason, this was the tipping point for John. He hated how she always tiptoed around talking about the war, as though he couldn't handle being reminded of it. He had _been_ there. That had been a lot harder than talking about it ever would be. "You know, just because I'm a veteran doesn't mean that _all _my problems are related to the war. Just back off, will you?"

She looked stunned for a second, before slamming her mug down hard on the table, splashing tea everywhere.

"If you don't tell me what's wrong, I'll never know what's wrong, and then I will continue being shit at guessing what's wrong."

"I don't want to talk about it!"

"Did something happen at work?"

"If you're going to try and guess your way forward, this is going to turn into a _very_ long game."

"Then just tell me!"

"I'm going out!" John finally yelled and got up, the chair crashing backwards behind him.

"John, come back here!" Olivia called after him as he slammed the kitchen door behind him. He pulled his jacket on and headed out into the cold morning, hands deep in his pockets. He could hear Olivia keep yelling as he closed the front door behind him, but didn't look back.

For a while he thought that he'd just keep walking, just like he'd done the night before, but today that wasn't enough. After walking an hour, the anger had run off him, and then he just felt bored. He needed some stimulation. He hadn't really been paying any attention to where he walked, and found himself just a couple of blocks from Dulwich District Library, so he headed there. He sat down by one of the computers and stopped for a minute or two, wondering what next to do. He checked his e-mail. Then he spent the rest of the day reading all the entries of Sherlock's blog, every single one. He'd never taken the time to do this when he'd lived with Sherlock. There were too many of them, and they were far too boring. Different types of mud and detailed accounts of perfumes? Compared to what his life used to be like, it didn't exactly raise his pulse. After Sherlock… well, he'd just never wanted to be reminded of him, of the life they'd had together, so he'd never even given it a thought. Now, however, that he needed every trick from Sherlock's sleeve, the read wasn't as much of a struggle it had once seemed.

At seven, he had reached the point where it where it was getting physically painful not to go to the bathroom, so he went, leaving the computer for the first time in hours. As he washed his hands, he looked in the mirror and was a bit startled at what he saw. He looked exactly like normal, perhaps a little more shadows around the eyes, but what really started him was that he didn't really recognise himself anymore. It was like seeing an old friend, but not really knowing what to say to them because you really had nothing in common anymore. In the mirror, John saw himself as he was three years ago, in the depth of the battlefield with Sherlock.

_You're not haunted by the war, Dr Watson, you miss it. Welcome back._

He had liked that person. And now, when there was a possibility, however remote, that Sherlock was alive? He had to find him.

A very odd sort of determination grabbed hold of him, and he almost ran out of the library, as though if he didn't hurry enough, the chance to catch up to Sherlock would somehow diminish. He waved down a cab.

"221 Baker Street."

He'd never had any plans on going back to the flat, but it did seem the logical place to start his investigations. He started by circling the block, then he widened the diameter, and circled again. That this ultimately would have him walking around all of London if followed through for enough time was of little concern to him. He just thought that he would pick up on something that might lead him to Sherlock, and what was it he used to say? _There is always a clue_.

As he widened the circle for the second time, his determination was still running high. He went down Chiltern Street, and turned right onto Porter Street, when a small alley between the tall, red Portman Mansions caught his eye. It was pitch black. There wasn't even a light in any of the windows overlooking the alley.

John couldn't have stopped to look more than a second or two, but as he did, the headlights of a car almost blinded him. Then the alley fell back into darkness. For a second, John wondered if someone was trying to tell him something. His mind was running haywire looking for clues, so his judgement probably wasn't the best. He thought briefly of the incident in Dartmoor, when he had been over-excited about Morse code delivered with the headlights of a car. It could've just been an accident. As he took another step, the lights flashed on again. John stopped again, trying to peer down the alley, but the strong light in the darkness made it virtually impossible.

"For god's sake, man, get in the car!"

It was the exasperated voice of Mycroft Holmes.

Out of all the people he had imagined running into, this was not one of them.

"It is terribly hard to do a dramatic entrance when people insist on being disturbingly unobservant."

John walked into the alley, feeling very insulted and angry with himself. So this was what happened when he tried looking for clues on his own: he didn't even notice when a clue was actively searching for his attention. He got closer, and saw Mycroft holding the door open to a very flashy car. He had gained weight.

"You didn't send one of your girls?" John asked. "What have I done to deserve the honour of the man himself?"

"Please, get into the car," Mycroft said, like someone who politely asks a pet to sit.

Over the years, the initial hatred John had felt towards Mycroft after Sherlock's death had faded away. But two years ago, he would not have trusted himself to be in the same car as him. He would probably not have trusted himself to shake his hand, without being overpowered by the urge to rip it off and beat him to death with it. But now… he tried to tell himself that he felt nothing, but that wasn't true. He felt something. This was the first time he had even seen Mycroft for years, so there had to be something. And Mycroft was certainly not the man to plan a dramatic entrance and participate in it himself if the reason wasn't important enough. He felt hope. Mycroft could, very likely, bring him closer to finding Sherlock.

John scooted into the car. Mycroft walked around and took the seat next to him. As soon as he closed the door, the car started rolling.

"I assume that you've not been able to avoid figuring out that Sherlock is alive?" Mycroft drawled, looking out of the tinted window of the car.

"No," said John, trying to suppress the irritation he felt at Mycroft's arrogance.

"He's become more reckless lately," Mycroft continued. "I assume that he's trying to attract your attention, otherwise he would never have needed to be this obvious."

"Do you know where he is?"

Mycroft didn't answer immediately. He seemed to be mulling over possible ways of formulating himself. "Generally, yes. Specifically, no."

"Meaning?"

"He doesn't _want _me to know exactly where he is."

"But he's here? He's in England?"

Mycroft looked at John with something that looked like pity, pity that anyone could be so thick. "England? Dr Watson, he hasn't even left London since he faked his death – yet again," he added begrudgingly.

John was stunned. For three years, Sherlock had never been more than a tube-ride away?

"We've been keeping tabs on him all the time, naturally. But it seems that he has, for a while, been trying to attract your attention – as I am sure you have noticed."

A while? What did that mean? The man with the scarf was brought in on Monday night, that wasn't even a week ago. Did that constitute 'a while'?

"His behaviour has become increasingly… erratic lately. He wants you to find him, John."

"Have you spoken to him?"

"No, no," said Mycroft with a bit of a chuckle. "Not in years. But we easily find ways to communicate with each other."

"I _am_ looking for him, you know," John felt that he needed to point out.

"Yes I know." He laughed. "It's quite sweet, really. And if I'd let you go on, you'd probably find him in less than a year. Only, I don't have a year to wait."

"You want me to find Sherlock _for you_?"

"To clarify my earlier point, as it has become clear that I must, he does not want me to find him, he wants _you_ to find him. Consequently, it would obviously be easier for _you_ to find him. However, regardless of how endearing it is to watch you amble along, I have quite a tight schedule, and would prefer to know where he is by the end of the week. And that brings me to why I picked you up tonight. While I do not have an address for my brother, I hope you remember enough not to underestimate my abilities. I might not know exactly where he is located at the moment, but my bets would be in the area around Brixton."

John would never in his life take a bet against Mycroft Holmes. "He's in Brixton?"

"He _wants_ to be found."

"He's in Brixton, London? He could be at my house right now?"

"I highly doubt that he will do something as drastic as that. But he has been in Brixton for, oh, I would say the last six months."

John didn't really know what to say, but felt that he needed to say something. "Why hasn't he just come to me, if he wants to be found?"

"Dear me, John, do you really think I know that much about my brother's motivations?"

"I know you do."

The atmosphere in the car changed dramatically with one look from Mycroft.

_The most dangerous man you've ever met._

For the first time, John got a feeling about the truth in these words.

"As I said before, he has become erratic lately."

The car stopped. John looked out the window. They were parked outside his flat.

"Off you go," Mycroft said softly, but John detected a threat in the words. But then again, most of the things Mycroft said were said with an air of 'or else'.

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**A/N: **Stay tuned for Chapter 6: The Hour of Our Death

Thanks for the reviews! Every single one of them is like a little piece of happiness that makes this story so much more fun to write :)


	6. The Hour of Our Death

**A/N:** Before the story I would like to draw the reader's attention to the fact that from this moment, the story will be rated M instead of T, because of language and violence.

While I have your attention, I'd also like to thank post-dub, who let me rant at her with the patience of a saint, when the story didn't feel right. Thank you!

Big thank-yous also to all the people who followed, favourited, or (as I love so much) reviewed! Reviews make my world go 'round, and you have no idea how happy I get by them. It's quite indecent, actually.

* * *

**Chapter 6: The Hour of Our Death**

John stumbled out of the car and onto the pavement. It felt like his entire world was being tilted on its axis. Everything was the same, but looked at from a different angle, making it appear totally unfamiliar. He opened the front door, climbed the stairs, and opened the door to his flat in a daze. The door was unlocked, so Olivia was home, he registered passively before he sat down at the kitchen table, _his_ place.

Sherlock Holmes was alive (well, he had pretty much figured that one out already, but to have it confirmed gave him confidence that he wasn't going insane), and he was just around the corner, figuratively, and maybe even literally. Why hadn't he tried to contact him sooner? Why was he trying to contact him now? Why didn't he just call? Had he tried to contact him in other ways, only John'd been to thick to figure it out? Where could he be right now? John immediately looked out the window, up and down the street, but it was empty. And erratic, what did that mean? Sherlock had always been erratic, but John was almost sure that Mycroft would never have used that term before, since the level of erraticism he'd noticed in Sherlock had always appeared to be a family trait. And what was it Mycroft wanted with Sherlock? Should he even try to help him?

John leaned back in the chair, taking deep breaths in an effort to make the questions appear more manageable.

"John?"

It was Olivia. She was peering out of the living room. She had very clearly been crying.

"Yes?"

"You missed your appointment with your therapist today."

John hadn't even though about it, but yes, it was Thursday, and no, he hadn't been there. He had been preoccupied, to say the least. He didn't say anything, so Olivia went on.

"She said it was the first time ever that you missed an appointment."

"I reckon she's right."

"You don't have to tell me what's going on, John," she said, moving closer across the kitchen. "You really don't. But please, just let me know if you're okay. I worry about you."

"I…" John was about to say that he was perfectly fine. However, at the moment he didn't feel it. "I don't know, really."

She didn't say anything, just put the kettle on. She really had done a lot for John the last two years. She'd really helped him get his life in order. She deserved more than this.

"It's just…" he began. "There's an old friend who's back. And I don't really know how I feel about that."

"Is it a girl?" Olivia asked, with a hint of jealousy that she tried to hide.

"No, it isn't," John answered honestly, but he could see that she didn't believe him. That she wasn't going to believe him even if he was honest made him even more annoyed.

"Just, you know, let me know if you need me," she said, trying hard to appear as open-minded as she wanted, but only managing halfway. She went up to bed.

John stayed in the kitchen, staring out of the window. He wanted the decision to be hard. He wanted to feel torn between the normal life he had worked so hard to attain, and the possibility of returning to his life with Sherlock. But he didn't feel torn at all, which made him feel like a bad person. He knew that now, when given the chance, he would never choose the normal life. He wasn't cut out for civilian life. It was a feeling he had had for long, and tried to communicate with his therapist, but she had tried to explain that it was just a matter of adjusting. These few days, when he'd been forced to think about Sherlock (apparently by Sherlock himself), he'd felt more alive than he had in years. It felt like there was potential being wasted when he just lived a normal life, and that led to a boredom so intense that he was beginning to understand how it could send Sherlock climbing the walls. These last few days was the first time in forever that he hadn't been bored.

John didn't move for hours. Around midnight he got up and walked around the kitchen for a few moments. In the end, the feeling of potentially finding Sherlock got to the better of him, and he jotted down a quick note for Olivia and left it on the kitchen table.

_I've gone out. I'll be back. Don't worry._

It was colder out than he had reckoned. There was a raw, bone-chilling quality in the air that made him hunch over and draw the jacket closer. He really should have worn a scarf. He looked up and down the street, trying to figure out where Sherlock would think he'd go. He chose to turn left. Sherlock had always been able to predict everything John was about to do, so he should be able to handle this as well.

He kept walking straight ahead, while looking around himself, to see if Sherlock was somewhere close. He didn't really know why, because he knew that it was very unlikely that he was going to find him crouching behind one of the neighbours' garden wall, or perched on one of the rooftops like some caped crusader. Well, on second thought, the latter did not seem all that improbable. John instinctively turned to look towards the roof of the row of houses to his right, but they were free of men.

After a while John lost track of where he was, but saw some movement in the underpass of a large road, which made him take interest. As he got closer, he first thought that it looked like there was nothing there, but he heard something that made him walk in further. When he had reached the middle of the underpass, three kids turned round the corner on the other end. They spaced out to cover the entire expanse of the underpass. For a second, John was reminded of Sherlock's vast homeless network.

"Lend us your phone," the smallest of the three said.

Okay, so probably not the homeless network.

As they got closer, John saw that they were older than he had first thought, probably around eighteen or twenty.

"What?"

"Lend us your fucking phone!"

"What? Why?" John was taken aback. Was this a mugging? Did people still get mugged? He didn't read the papers anymore. He'd never been mugged in his life, and it felt like a very out-dated mode of crime.

"I need to make a call," the tallest of them said, stepping forward, in what John assumed was supposed to be a threatening manner.

"Don't you have your own phone?"

"Come on, lend us your phone."

"No, mate, I don't think so," John said and tried to walk past them, at which they shoved him backwards, hard enough that he almost lost his balance. It actually was a mugging, and it started to feel like he couldn't use avoidance as a tactic anymore.

"Do you think we're idiots?" asked the middle one.

"Give us your phone, give us your wallet!" the tallest one chimed in.

Wallet? Who the hell carried money on them anymore? He wouldn't mind much, giving them his wallet, but his phone was a different story. He really didn't want to lose his phone, not like this, not when he was looking for Sherlock.

"I don't have any money," John tried, fishing up his wallet from his back pocket. "Here, take it."

"Give us your phone, then."

"Come on! Before we fucking do you!"

'Do him'? Were they going to kill him or rape him? This was getting ridiculous.

"Look, take my wallet," John said, but had the feeling that he was losing control of the situation very quickly.

"Give us your phone!" the tall one said and shoved him hard against the wall of the underpass, extricating a knife from his pocket with his other hand

Without really thinking, John threw the first punch. He regretted it before his fist had even made contact with the chin of the tall one. He had initiated a fight against three kids, two of whom were taller than he was. Not only that, at least one of them had a knife, while he was completely unarmed. He might have had a military background, but for the last three years, he'd been a normal doctor and not even gotten into a heated argument, let alone an actual fight.

The tall one was so surprised by the punch that he fell down, even though John wasn't exactly satisfied by the strength he put behind it. The other two were also taken aback, but found their feet quicker than John, and before he had a chance to think about what would be the best move, a fist had landed in his stomach and he was doubling over in pain.

The tall one was obviously the leader of the three, and the other two clearly didn't know what they were supposed to do now. John saw this as his only chance to get away, if he managed to scramble to his feet before the tall one did. He aimed a kick at the knee of one of the others, he didn't really know which one from this angle, and he also went down. As the tall one was getting up, John decided to run for it, steadying himself against the wall as he went.

"Get him!" someone called behind him and he started running faster.

He skidded around the corner, going back the same way he came, but quickly turning off the straight route he'd come from. It'd been long since he'd run, so a lot quicker than he expected, he was panting heavily. Suddenly something caught the leg of his trousers and he fell face-first against the wet tarmac, chipping a tooth and feeling blood fill his mouth. As he turned around he saw that it was one of the kids who'd caught up with him already, even though he had several seconds' head start. He must really be out of shape.

"Fuck," groaned the kid, and John saw that he'd landed on his wrist, that was now twisted in a very painful angle. It was clearly broken. He kicked his leg free and started running again as he saw the others turn the corner and running past their fallen comrade.

John didn't have very much more in him as he dove into a large parking garage. If he couldn't shake them or hide from them, he would get beaten up badly. He had no chance of outrunning them, that much was clear, but he'd seen too many muggings gone awry at the A&E to want to be the victim of another one.

He crouched down behind one of the first cars he saw in the half-empty garage. Was this really what he was reduced to? Hiding behind a car to avoid teenage muggers? Once upon a time he'd been kidnapped by Chinese gangster, made into a human bomb by a 'consulting criminal' and shot by the Taliban, but oh, no, this was how he might die, beaten to death by three kids in a garage. Perfect. How appropriately humiliating.

As he heard steps approaching, he covered his mouth and nose with his hand to quiet his breathing. A dark shape passed between the cars, walking further into the garage with his back towards John now. Refusing to let himself be killed in a parking garage, he jumped out, and pushed the kid hard in the back, so that he fell face-first down on the ground. John took the few extra seconds that it bought him to turn and deeper into garage, there had to be other exits somewhere.

As he turned around the corner he smashed right into someone. Fuck. The third kid, the small one. He'd forgotten about him. The force of the impact made lights dance around in front of his eyes, and for several seconds he was so disoriented that he didn't know what way was up. His mouth was rapidly filling with blood, and when he tried to spit it out, it just ran down his throat instead, warm and thick. He felt like he was going to be sick as he felt pieces of at least one tooth swim around in his mouth, he'd chipped off the better part of one of his front teeth. However, his body still hurt enough to tell him that he wasn't badly hurt, so he started trying to get to his feet, only to slump against the wall as he found his balance too far off. The kid seemed even worse off; he was still down, moaning and writhing on his back.

The knife! John remembered the weapon in a flash of panic. The others might catch up any second now. He started frantically scanning the floor of the dark garage for something, just to know in what direction to move, when he spotted a flash of metal as a car drove by out on the street. Then it was swallowed up by darkness again. No, wait. He tried to blink the dancing lights out of his eyes. No, someone had picked it up. Someone was in there with them. John felt as though a stone had landed on his chest. Fuck. There was a fourth.

"So you like taking things that aren't yours," said a cheerful voice drawled, and though his head was still spinning, John knew that voice. It was Sherlock.

He moved closer to the kid on the ground, who tried to edge away, but was clearly pretty badly hurt. Sherlock grabbed a hold of the kid's wrist and very roughly yanked his arm out, placing his foot on his chest to keep him in place.

"Now keep still. I like taking things that don't belong to me too," he snarled dangerously, crouching down. From the twisted angle John watched, he only saw Sherlock's back, but the kid's panicked screams alarmed him.

"Shut up!" Sherlock snapped in response to the guttural screams of pure agony. "It's just fingers; it's not going to kill you. You'll learn the lesson, though."

The screams petered out in weird blubbering, and the flailing stopped abruptly as the kid passed out of the ground. Sherlock straightened up, and letting something small drop to his feet: two fingers that he kicked away across the tarmac. John was almost sure he was going to be sick, and the warm blood in his mouth wasn't exactly helping. But most of all he was relieved. Relieved that this wasn't how he was going to die, relieved that he wasn't going insane, relieved that Sherlock was with him, relieved that Sherlock was alive, relived that…

"Sherlock?" he tried to say, but his mouth was still filling up with blood, so it was more of a gurgle as he dribbled blood all over his front. He barely recognised the face in front of him. He blinked a bit. The man that standing there reminded him of Sherlock in so many ways, but still didn't look like him. His hair was short, and he had a beard. And he looked older, quite a bit older. And his clothes weren't right. It wasn't the suave coat and fitted trousers, but sweat-pants and a hoodie.

"Good evening, John." He stretched out a bloody hand as an offer to help him up.

There was no doubt about it, Sherlock Holmes had returned from the dead.

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**A/N: **Stay tuned for Chapter 7: The Return of Sherlock Holmes


	7. The Return of Sherlock Holmes

**Chapter 7: The Return of Sherlock Holmes**

As a disguise, it was perfect. John could have walked out his door that very morning, bumped into this man, muttered an excuse and then been on his way without being any the wiser. He'd never really thought that Sherlock was willing to cut his hair off or grow a beard for a disguise; he'd always come off as a bit too vain for that. Was it a real beard though? John took a step closer. Well, it looked real enough. He had never seen Sherlock before with so much as a five o'clock shadow.

He didn't really know why he had thought that if Sherlock were alive, he'd look the same as he had three years ago. It was a ridiculous thought, that he wouldn't change his hair, or his clothes, but still, _this_ much?

"You took your time," he said blandly. "I've been trying to get your attention for the last six months. I was starting to suspect I'd have to choke someone with a deer-stalker before you started to notice."

John didn't know what to say. He'd been trying to live a life where Sherlock was dead, and he didn't think it was _that _strange that he hadn't been looking for clues that he was alive. Especially after three years. He didn't say anything, just tried to spit out the rest of the blood and wipe it off his face. His lip was beginning to swell and throb.

"You've lost your touch."

"I thought you didn't think I had a touch."

Sherlock smiled as though at some private joke. John didn't get it.

"Seriously, I think I might need to go to the dentist," John said instead, feeling his what remained of his tooth with his tongue.

"Walk it off."

Sherlock turned on his heel and strode away in the other direction. John hurried to catch back up without even thinking about it. He was not about to lose Sherlock again, not after finally having found him. Well, the question of who found whom remained open for debate.

"Where have you been for all these years?" John asked when he realised that Sherlock wasn't going to say anything if he didn't start.

"Around. Not far away. Your girlfriend is _very_ pretty."

"You've been watching me?"

"Of course I have. So has Mycroft."

"He's been trying to watch you as well, you know," John countered, hoping that this would somehow make him look less uninformed than he was.

"Yes, I know. It's been a lot of fun. Really kept me on my toes. He's only getting better with age, you know. Never really thought he'd stoop so low as to use you, though."

"I think he's concerned about you."

Sherlock didn't answer at first. He took a deep breath and scratched his beard. "I think he might have reason to be concerned."

They kept walking in silence for a few minutes. At first, John had interpreted Sherlock's purpose-filled steps as a indication that they were walking somewhere, taking a route that Sherlock seemed to know by heart, twisting and turning up and down the streets. But then he realised that they were walking past a Sainsbury's they'd walked by before. Were they just moving in an elaborate circle?

"Why didn't you tell me?" John blurted out. It was the question that had been gnawing him ever since he'd started to suspect that Sherlock was alive. "You could've told me. At least something. At least that you were alive."

"I probably could have," Sherlock conceded. "But you can never be too careful."

"Careful? Sherlock, I went to your funeral!" John felt anger boiling up inside of him. It caught him by surprise.

"I need your help, John."

"No, this is _not_ how it works! You were dead! You were dead for three years. I have a life now, Sherlock." While he would drop anything in his life to return to his life with Sherlock, he was a bit put off by how obvious _Sherlock _thought it was that he would drop anything in his life to return to him.

"Time? Time is subjective and cyclical, John, it doesn't enter into it."

"No, Sherlock, time is not cyclical, time is linear, and you were gone for three years!"

"I'm losing it, John," he said suddenly, in a very different tone. "I'm losing it, and Mycroft knows it too."

"Losing what? Your mind?"

"No, not my mind, that's not the problem," Sherlock waved impatiently with his hand, a movement that did not really match the hint of tremor that was in his voice just a few seconds ago. "No, it's the… It's the other thing."

"The other thing? Because it seems to me that it's your mind that's going."

Sherlock was clearly not looking for a word; he just didn't want to say it.

"Without anybody ordinary around to constantly give me insight into the minds of idiots, I've found it harder to… relate. It's starting to impede my work."

_He's a psychopath. And psychopaths get bored._

"John, I need you," Sherlock said, slowing down to a halt. "I'm starting to scare myself. I've done things."

_His behaviour has become increasingly…erratic lately._

John's heart was starting to thump almost painfully hard. He thought about the people in the A&E. "What have you done?"

Sherlock started walking again.

"I've started to notice changes in behaviour. Sadistic tendencies, decreased behavioural controls, increased impulsiveness, criminal versatility, lack of empathy, shallow emotional responses."

"Manipulative, grandiose sense of self-worth, proneness to boredom," John filled in. He was familiar with the PCL-R, the psychopathy checklist. "Sherlock, call me old-fashioned, but I think most people would consider gravitation to psychopathy as 'losing your mind'."

"I need you to keep me sane, John," he said with a sincerity that caught John off guard.

John didn't find it very difficult to imagine that Sherlock, without the constant presence of someone normal could easily spiral out of control. Without anyone to tell him when to sleep, to eat, not to call people at five in the morning, it wasn't hard to conclude that Sherlock would become more… well, Sherlock than ever.

John had let the words hang in the air for too long to pick that thread up again, but the atmosphere hadn't lightened.

"Why did you do it?" he asked after a few moments of tense silence.

"I had to," Sherlock answered pensively. "At first it was because of Moriarty's plan. He'd have you, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade killed if his people didn't see me jump. So I jumped." He quieted for a moment, the resumed. "I took advantage of my presumed death to root out the last vestiges of Moriarty's web. It didn't take more than a few months."

For around a minute, the only sound that could be heard was the heels of John's shoes against the tarmac, Sherlock was wearing sneakers.

"It was something you said that got to me," Sherlock started again, after a bit too long for it to form a natural part of the conversation. "It was very observant of you to spot it, and terribly unobservant of me to miss it. I wasn't a private detective anymore, and I was proud. People knew my name and they idolized me."

John knew Sherlock well enough to know that this wasn't anything he actually minded. He was a vain, proud man, and by the sound of his voice, he hadn't changed at least that part of him. In spite of what he was saying, John knew that it wasn't the attention that had gotten to Sherlock, it was something else.

"All the menial cases… Missing paintings, missing children, missing pets, missing wives. Not only was I no longer a _private_ detective, I wasn't even a _detective_. I was some high-profile sniffer-dog to be called in when the police needed positive press in high-profiled cases of judges losing keys."

"It was a supreme court justice who had had his two daughters kidnapped by the Russian mob!" John protested. He was almost surprised at how well he remembered everything; it was as though no time at all had passed.

"Same difference." Sherlock shrugged. "In the end I decided that it would be better for everyone if my name wasn't cleared, and that I would have just died then and there, and I could get on with my life, put the whole 'consulting detective' down as experience. I'm just sorry I couldn't let you in on it."

John stared straight ahead, watching his breath steam in the cold night air.

"And now? Are you back for good?" John asked. He could hear his heart thumping in his chest as he anticipated the answer, and he was pretty sure Sherlock could hear it too.

"Yes."

"Did Mycroft know the whole time?"

"I never told him. So I guess that he figured it out in a day or two."

"Oh."

The tension from before was gone, blown away in the autumn wind, together with three years of absence.

"So how long have you been trying to contact me?"

"Six months. I've already told you. You're very inattentive. I actually brought you pizza once."

"You came to my home, knocked on my door, took my money and I didn't know it was you?"

"Not even you would have been _that_ inattentive. Your girlfriend opened. You just passed me on the staircase."

John couldn't help letting out a laugh, almost in spite of himself.

"Also," Sherlock said suddenly, as though picking up an old train of thought. "I think I might need your help very soon. Have you ever heard of Sebastian Moran?"

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**A/N:** I got some new followers and favourites! Hello! *Waves manically*  
I'm going through a bit of a rough patch with this story, so please review more than ever, because I'll take all suggestions, tips and criticism and incorporate them in the later chapters!

Anyway, stay tuned for Chapter 8: Bruiser!


	8. Bruiser

**Chapter 8: Bruiser**

John had seen his friendship with Sherlock eclipse every other aspect of his life before, so this time, he decided to act pre-emptively. He had worked far too hard on his new life to just watch it crumble as he turned his back, and more importantly, Olivia deserved better. So, after returning from an emergency visit to the dentist in the morning, he spent Friday being the best boyfriend imaginable, putting off what he knew would be a very uncomfortable conversation for the evening, when he had booked a table at a fancy restaurant. He did not really know exactly how this would make telling her about Sherlock any easier, but he wanted to hedge his bets, and had the distinct feeling that a nice dinner might be the way to do that. At least the planning took his mind of _how_ he was going to tell her about his time with Sherlock, and why he had been acting so strange lately.

As Olivia got out of the shower and started getting ready for dinner, John felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. How could he possibly try to explain his and Sherlock's relationship? How did you even start explaining that you knew someone who had faked his own death? It felt as though he had just gotten access to another world, a world that had been locked to him before. There was one world, the normal world, with its pain-in-the-ass nurses and where quirky was keeping tomatoes in a wok, but he now also had a leg in Sherlock's world, where you had archenemies, and quirky was keeping a human head in the fridge. Now that he found himself straddling these two worlds, and confronted with having to explain it all to Olivia, they appeared irreconcilable. Would Olivia even believe him, let alone understand him, and why he wanted that life?

The closer the time of the reservation got, the more excited Olivia became and the more anxious John grew, until they were actually sitting there, in the middle of the restaurant. Holy hell, how had the day gone by so quickly?

"Umm," he began with trepidation. He could barely hear his voice over the loud and alarmingly fast beating of his heart. "I know I've been acting a bit… odd lately."

"You don't say?" said Olivia with a smile. He knew that it was supposed to reassure him, but it only made him feel worse. God, why hadn't he told her about Sherlock from the start? Not that it would have made it any easier with the whole 'faking-your-own-death' part, but at least it would have been one thing less to explain.

"It seems that an old friend of mine is back in London," he started. This felt like a suitably easy way to start the conversation.

"Yes, the one that wasn't a girl. You've already told me that, remember?" Olivia said, almost challenging him to admit that it was a girl. Damn, had he already used that opening before?

"It's not a girl, it's an old friend I haven't talked to in years," John said, trying to keep his pace now that he had finally made up his mind to tell her.

"Is it an old army buddy?" she asked, feeling her way.

"Yes."

John didn't know why he said that, and the moment the word escaped him, he regretted it. He must take it back – say that he'd misheard her. He had to be honest; otherwise it was never going to work. He couldn't worm his way out of a lie by omission by telling to a proper lie instead: the semantics of it wouldn't be on his side anymore.

He was just about to open his mouth when he started wondering if she hadn't given him the perfect way out. By telling her that Sherlock was an old friend from the army, she wouldn't ask any questions. PTSD would also be the perfect cover-up for Sherlock being the way he was, he knew that Olivia's knowledge of clinical psychiatry was very limited. He could keep the two parts of his life separate, couldn't he? He could keep having one leg in each world.

"He came back from Afghanistan just a week ago. He's got no one, and he's really been affected by the war."

"That's terrible!" Olivia exclaimed, reaching over the table to put her hand on John's.

John closed his eyes and nodded, as though it was too hard for him to talk about it. Internally he heaved a huge sigh of relief, feeling as though he had jumped the sinking ship and landed in a life raft.

"Can I help you?" Olivia asked suddenly. Was she talking to him? John looked up.

Of course she wasn't talking to him, she was turned towards the tall stranger that stood far too close to the table for anyone who had a rudimentary grasp of the idea of 'personal space'. Well, it was a stranger to Olivia at least; the man was no stranger to John. Sherlock looked remarkably like his old self. He had ditched the seedy sweats, and was back in a tailored suit and the long coat. He had shaved the beard as well, but there was not much he had been able to do with the hair, which looked even more out of place when the attributes of his old persona were restored.

"Olivia, this is the friend I was telling you about just now," John started, feeling unspeakably uncomfortable. He had been so pleased with the lie that he didn't want Sherlock to come and ruin everything before he had had a chance to enjoy his new calm. Many things could be said about Sherlock, but he did not look like a soldier, and he did not look like he had just returned from Afghanistan.

Sherlock eyed Olivia very quickly, and then turned to John, having judged Olivia beneath his notice. "I need to talk to you."

"Yes, that's very possible, but I'm right in the middle of dinner."

"You haven't even ordered yet."

"That doesn't make your timing any better."

"Yes, it does."

"Look, I promise I will call you as soon as I'm done with dinner, but right now I'm – "

"But I'm dying, John," Sherlock interrupted, now changing tactics.

"No, you're not dying." John laughed a little, to make it seem as though this was one of their inside jokes, but the laughter that was supposed to come out as a sort of confident chuckle sounded more like a nervous giggle. Olivia did not look particularly amused.

"But I am," Sherlock maintained, still completely deadpan. For good measure he added a single, very theatrical, cough.

"Look, I'll just go to the loo, and you two can straighten this out," Olivia offered, looking at John like she knew exactly what was going on. She looked with tender pity at Sherlock, who she quite rightly assessed to be a bit off his trolley.

"Are you still here?" Sherlock asked with genuine surprise.

Olivia looked very offended for half a second before she again turned to John with a look of profound understanding of how hard this must be for him, seeing an old friend this unhinged. She scooted off her chair and headed for the toilet, and Sherlock immediately took her seat.

"You need to come with me, right now. I need to use you," Sherlock explained very rapidly.

"Hang on," protested John. "You need to _use_ me? For what?"

"To get to Moran," Sherlock said quickly, as though it was obvious.

John sat quiet, hoping that Sherlock would understand that he would need more information. Sherlock did not understand that, and looked at John as though he was a bit slow. John felt that he needed to clarify his position. "I had not heard the name before last night, to which you said that you'd tell me later. Then we had falafel. This is the first I hear of Moran since then."

"How I envy you sometimes," Sherlock mused, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head as though John was a wondrous specimen on display. "Come with me."

Sherlock stood up abruptly and quickly paced towards the door. John just managed to catch the end of his coat, and he stopped in his tracks, puzzled by his action.

"I can't just leave when she's in the loo!" John hissed, wondering if he really thought that it would be all right if she'd still been at the table.

"We're in a hurry, John," Sherlock explained, very clearly conceding that he was talking to someone not on his own level.

"You've waited three years for this Moran, are you sure you can't wait two more hours?"

Sherlock stopped as he mulled this over. He looked to John to see if this was indeed a reasonable request, then he looked around the restaurant. "So I shall just wait here, shall I?"

* * *

The thought of having Sherlock standing there for the rest of the meal had been the tipping point. There just was no way that would have ended well. So choosing between either leaving then and there, or having Sherlock joining them, he had decided that there was a better chance that he would be able to smooth over leaving Olivia at the restaurant than repairing whatever damage Sherlock would inflict on his relationship during the course of a dinner. This was certainly not a very good beginning to having one leg in either world, John conceded as he got into the cab after Sherlock. Olivia was going to be furious with him when she got back to the table to find John gone, and just a note next to her half-drunk martini. But at least he had someone to blame, which was a small, but not unimportant consolation.

You're acting like a junkie, he told himself as he revelled in the wonderful excitement that coursed through him on the way to his next battle at Sherlock's side. He knew that he would give up almost anything for that feeling. He had missed it coming back from the war, he had missed it when Sherlock was gone, and he knew that he would miss it if he'd ever have to give it up again. It had only taken the very smallest hint from Sherlock to bring that feeling back to him, and like a sober alcoholic, he had fallen back into his addiction.

He knew all too well that he had lied to himself before, when he'd argued to himself that he could have the one leg in each world. As the cab sped through London, John remembered giving up his job, and the way girlfriend after girlfriend had given up on him when they realised that Sherlock was part of the bargain. It seemed like there was no way of having Sherlock in your life without having him eclipse everything else.

* * *

**A/N:  
**This is an homage to the sadly short-lived series Bruiser (Martin Freeman is a terrific sketch comedian), where Sparky the puppet keeps interrupting his friend's dates and life in general (sounds familiar?).

Also, huge thanks to the two writers who helped me handle the bit of a rough patch I was going through: post-dub and AJ Elfhawk, both of whom write amazing stories that you really should check out as well! And of course, as always, thanks to everyone who followed, favourited or, most of all, reviewed! There's a special place in heaven for you lot! Now, who will have the honour of writing my 20th review?

Stay tuned for Chapter 9: Happiness is Just a Taxi-Ride Away


	9. Happiness Is Just A Taxi-Ride Away

**Chapter 9: Happiness Is Just A Taxi-Ride Away**

It took almost fifteen minutes for John to notice that he had no idea where the taxi was taking them. At first, they had been heading out of the city, but after a very elaborate turn, it was now bringing them back in. For a moment John thought that the cabbie had assumed that they were tourists and was trying to hike up his fare, but remembered that Sherlock wouldn't have let that happen. No, they had to be going somewhere. John leaned back and watched the Friday night crowds milling around the streets. As they headed down Regent Street, the bright lights fell through the windows, lighting up Sherlock's pale face in random colours. He was looking out of the window, concentrated and unswerving.

John didn't know if it was just his imagination, but the happy, drunken crowds outside the window made a stark contrast to the new, hard set of Sherlock's mouth. His thoughts were involuntarily drawn to the way the kid had passed out last night, Sherlock crouching over him, removing his foot from the kid's chest when he no longer needed to keep him still. Could he really be losing his mind? It felt impossible.

"I want to return, John," he said suddenly, without turning away from the window.

"I thought you had."

"This doesn't count."

John didn't say anything. He thought it counted, but didn't want to say it out loud.

"I can't live like I have for years, but I can't live like this either," Sherlock went on.

"Like what?"

"Half returned. I want to go back to Baker Street."

"Then why don't you? Is that where we're going?"

"No. Not yet."

"Then where are we going?" John was starting to feel a bit impatient.

Sherlock didn't answer. He kept looking out of the window, and John felt the familiar frustration of being with Sherlock. It felt so easy, going back into the old patterns, like slipping into an old, forgotten set of clothes. But yet, something felt a bit off. John couldn't shake the sound of how screaming had turned to smothered gurgling as the kid had passed out. Shit, he'd been a mugger, but still, he'd just been a kid.

"I've had half a life for three years," Sherlock said quickly, as though he wanted to get it out of the way. "I haven't been able to do what I set out to do. I haven't been able to kill Moran, and he's the only thing that stands between me and coming back."

"Can you just please tell me who Moran is?"

Sherlock turned to John, and for a second he almost thought he could see something that looked like pain in his hard features. "He is the worst kind of assassin: a lazy one."

John racked his brain for all the bad stuff he and Sherlock had been through, and he found this very hard to believe. "Is a lazy assassin _really _the worst kind?"

"Well, the over-ambitious ones are pretty bad too," Sherlock allowed with a huff. "But this one… He bothers me. He knows that _I _know exactly what he's capable of, but still he just… waits."

"He waits?"

"Yes. He waits for the opportune time for _him_. He's not in a rush."

"But who is he?"

"One of Moriarty's men. The only one left," Sherlock said with poorly disguised satisfaction. "He's a skilled sniper, probably one of the best there is. He was perturbed when the Rich Brook-plan failed, and he took it upon himself to see it through. Matter of honour, or something like that. Normal people have a very crude sense of loyalty."

The scorn and disgust in the way he pronounced 'normal people' took John aback. He couldn't help but count himself to the throng of 'normal people', and he knew that Sherlock did the same.

"So it's him you've been hiding from?" John ventured.

"Hiding?" Sherlock snorted derisively. "I haven't been hiding from him – I've been trying to get to him."

"The beard, the hair and the living in Brixton does look a bit like hiding, if you ask me."

"I didn't ask you. I've been trying to get to him ever since it became clear that he saw my death as his responsibility. But as I said, he's not in a rush. He can know for days, weeks even, where I'm at, and he will still just… wait."

Suddenly, the cab came to a stop. John looked around, but didn't really recognise the central side street. Was this where they had been going? They had stopped at the corner of a very dark, very secluded alley. John was reminded of the alley at Portman Mansions, where Mycroft had caught up to him. But the lights from the cab made it clear that no expensive cars were hiding further down the alley.

"What are we doing here?" John asked, without really expecting a reply.

"I am a busy man, I have errands to run," Sherlock said in a clipped tone and got out of the cab. "I won't be long."

As Sherlock walked into the alley, a door was kicked open, and the strong light of a restaurant kitchen cut through the gloom. At first, John thought that Sherlock was going to go in, that this had been planned, but it was only someone from the curry-place putting the rubbish out. In the light of the open door, John could make out how Sherlock knocked on the door on the other side of the alley, waited, then knocked again, waited, and then finally knocked a third time. Was it a signal? The door opened almost immediately after the third knock, let Sherlock in, and then closed again, quickly.

Alone again, John couldn't stop his thoughts returning to what Sherlock had been saying about Moran, and he was starting to see what the real problem was. The discrepancy in modus operandi between Sherlock and a sniper – any sniper – was obvious for anyone who had had any contact with skilled snipers. From the very limited information he had about this Moran, he knew that he was hardly a 'lazy assassin'; he was a _very_ skilled sniper. And he clearly had a better grasp of Sherlock's character than either of them knew. Snipers as a breed were patient, calm, and knew how to wait for the exactly right moment to make a single shot count. John wasn't a remarkably good sniper himself; he could shoot, yes, but a sniper? That was something else. He'd had training though, and he could still remember the instructor's voice: 'If you have a moment, relax. I have a moment, so I relax.' This was what Moran was doing. He knew he had a moment, so he relaxed. Sherlock, on the other hand, was impatient and prone to boredom, and Moran's leisurely pace was getting to him. By not doing anything, he'd managed to get underneath the detective's skin in a way John had seen few people do. Was this what had made him… all mixed up?

Sherlock re-emerged from the doorway, his hands deep in his pockets as he strode back towards the cab. He sat back down.

"I've tried to get to him," Sherlock said, gritting his teeth.

"Who?" asked John, now focused on what he'd been doing on his errand. Had he tried to drop something off, or tried to pick something up, but not been able to? He didn't seem as disgruntled as he usually did when things didn't go his way.

"Moran, John," Sherlock said with irritation. "Try to keep up. He just doesn't budge. He just waits until he thinks I'm unprepared. This is where you come into the plan."

"And here I was thinking you just missed me," John grumbled sarcastically.

"I did," answered Sherlock, much to John's surprise. "I missed you very much."

This caught John off-guard. It was the closest he had gotten to affection from Sherlock in, well, he couldn't even remember. Their friendship had been mainly of an unspoken nature, so that when it was out in the open like this, it felt very out of place. It was now John's turn to self-consciously look out of the window. "I missed you too." Having said the words, it felt like such an understatement that he wished he hadn't said anything.

"I do, however, need to use you in this plan," Sherlock said after clearing his throat, breaking the very tense silence that had followed the slightly awkward exchange. "We need to lure Moran out. We need him to be in a position where he is so focused on the task at hand that he forgets to protect his own back."

John had at first been a bit too preoccupied by the 'we', that he forgot the implication of Sherlock's words.

"Bait? You want me to be the bait? _That's_ what you needed me for? You want me to lure a sniper out?" he asked annoyed. Had Sherlock just said he'd missed him to make him more willing to step into the line of fire? Was he only trying to use him?

"You?" asked Sherlock, genuinely perplexed, an expression that did not suit him. "Why would he want to kill you?"

John opened his mouth to interrupt, but Sherlock just went on.

"I'm the bait. He will barely budge as it is, he would never come out of hiding for anything less than me. I've tried with a number of decoys, but he's seen through most of them, and I've never been able to get close enough to him. No, I'll have to be the bait. You will just have to kill him."

Despite the overtly criminal and morally reprehensible nature of the instruction, what really made John feel ill at ease was the 'just'. _You will _just_ have to kill him_.

* * *

**A/N:**A big shout-out to Weisse-Lilie, who had the dubious honour of writing my 20th review! Massive thanks go out to you, and everyone else who've reviewed! You guys really make it so much more fun to sit down and jot down my little stories!

As with the former chapter: it wouldn't have worked nearly as well without the helpful comments from post-dub and AJ Elfhawk, who are both lovely and wonderful! And probably smell good, but that's just conjecture.

Stay tuned, chapter 10 is coming up!


	10. Unhinged

**A/N: **Could it be? Is this story back? Yes, it is! Finally! Please feel very free to review (seriously alleviation, you got my ass off the couch) because at the moment it feels like reviews are what keeps me going! Hope you like it as the story goes on.

**Chapter 10: Unhinged  
**

When the taxi finally stopped again, John was very surprised to find himself outside his own home. He had thought they were somewhere around Acton, but then again, he'd not really been paying attention to where they were going. The first thing he noticed was that the lights were on in the upstairs flat, meaning that Olivia was home. A rush of guilt washed over him as he realised that he hadn't spared her a thought after ditching her in the restaurant. He hadn't even felt terribly bad about it, which now only made him feel worse.

"Fuck", he groaned as he rubbed his face in his hands. This was not going to end well. He slammed the door of the cab shut and slowly moved up the small path to the front door.

That was when Sherlock passed him, reaching for the door.

"Hang on," he said suddenly, grabbing hold of Sherlock's sleeve. "You can't come up with me. Don't you have a place of your own?"

"Not really," Sherlock shrugged. "It got shot at a few days ago. It's very draughty now."

"Your flat got shot at?"

"Yes, well, flat might not be the word I'd use, but, you know. Yeah, I think they thought I was in there," he said with an almost affectionate smile, as though talking about the antics of children.

"But you can't stay at my place," John protested, getting in the way as Sherlock again reached for the door.

"Of course I can. I've even got the keys." He pulled up a set from his pocket.

John felt for his pockets.

"Those aren't even mine!" he exclaimed when he realised that his keys were still safe in his jacket.

"No, they're the landlord's."

John decided that even that was too much information, and made up his mind not to ask for any more. Instead he tried to focus on what he should tell Olivia when they got up there. He opened the door and started to climb the stairs when he turned back to Sherlock. "Can you please try to act like an old army buddy? Just try."

"Are you already lying to her?" he asked with an almost conspiratorial smile that did not make John feel any calmer about the situation. "I like that."

"No, I'm not lying to her. A lot. Just about… you."

John heard exactly what it had sounded like, and regretted it immediately when he saw that Sherlock had too. He almost fell backwards trying to evade Sherlock, who'd taken three steps in a stride to grab his jacket, and was now pushing him roughly against the wall. He leaned in, pressing himself up against John, until he could actually feel his breath against his ear. Was that his leg pressing against his crotch?

"And why did you feel the need to lie about me?" he whispered with a dangerous voice that was clearly meant to be sexual, but the moment was about as erotically charged as doing the recycling. It was Sherlock going through motions he'd seen others do, without even beginning to fathom the motivation behind it.

"Normal people don't have friends who fake their own deaths," John said coldly and pushed Sherlock off of him. He let go immediately. "And my life with Olivia is normal. And I'd like it to stay that way, please."

"So boring."

"Yes, maybe, but then again, my home hasn't been the scene of violent gun-crime recently. You win some, lose some, I guess."

"Seems like lose, lose to me."

"It would, wouldn't it?"

One of the doors on the landing above them opened and Olivia's concerned face looked out. She had probably just looked out to check what all the noise had been about, and probably to tell off the neighbours, but when she saw that it was John, her face turned from 'what's-going-on-out-there' to 'fuck-off'. She slammed the door shut, and John heard her turn the locks.

"Please, Olivia, I'm sorry!" he called, sprinting up the last couple of steps, knocking on the door.

"You're not coming in here," she yelled through the door.

"Can't you just open, and we can talk about this!"

"I don't want to talk about it!"

"Don't you get it? He's unwell! He's fucking deranged!" John yelled back, then turned to Sherlock with a slightly apologetic look, as he felt that these words were truer than he would like them to be, so he added under his breath: "Sorry 'bout that."

"I could break down that door," was Sherlock's response.

"That's not the point!"

"You can sleep at his place!" Olivia called through the door.

"It'd be easy."

"We're not breaking the door down! It's not just about getting into the flat, Sherlock! She's my girlfriend, I want to put this right."

Sherlock just looked at him as though he was speaking another language – one of the few he didn't know.

"You're not putting it right by dragging him here!" Olivia yelled.

"You don't even know him!" As he said it, John realised that this might not be a detriment.

"We wouldn't even need to break the door in. I have the keys, remember?"

"Please, Sherlock, back off. This is not about physically getting into the flat. Olivia, honey, please open the door. I promise he won't come in with me."

"I won't?"

"No, you won't."

There was a long silence before John heard the locks open, and the door open ever so slightly.

"You've forgotten the chain," he began, but trailed off as he saw his toothbrush being poked through the crack of the door. "Olivia, please."

"Take it, and then piss off."

John had half a mind to try to put his hand in the door, to reach for her, to calm her down, to hold her, but there was something in her voice that made him think that she might slam the door shut on his fingers, so he didn't. Before he'd managed to make his mind up, Sherlock had darted in and grabbed the toothbrush. The door slammed shut immediately afterwards, and the locks turned again.

"Excellent. We'll have another adventure," he said with the same cheery face as last night, before he headed down the stairs. "Aren't you coming?"

John felt very uncomfortable. He was fairly certain that Olivia wanted him to send Sherlock away and keep grovelling for a while, and then maybe he'd get to at least sleep on the sofa. He wasn't supposed to actually do what she said and piss off; he was supposed to keep haggling the terms of his return to the flat for a while. But Sherlock stood bouncing on the balls of his feet at the bottom of the staircase, looking very impatient and excited. He knew that whatever Sherlock was offering was bound to be better than a night on the couch, so after a rough minute of wavering on the landing, he headed down the stairs, hoping he could salvage the situation tomorrow, when they were all rested and the incident in the restaurant wasn't quite as fresh.

* * *

About an hour later, John and Sherlock were sitting in an uncomfortably fashionable bar in Crawford Street, surprisingly close to their old flat in Baker Street.

"I'm really not in the mood for this," John pointed out as he sipped his second beer. "I really need some sleep."

Sherlock didn't say anything. He hadn't been saying much in a while, he'd been looking around the crowd with growing intensity, and now seemed barely to hear John.

"Are you listening? I thought you lived in Brixton as well."

Sherlock made a vague, non-committal nod to show that he'd heard.

"Where _is_ your flat, exactly?"

"I don't have one."

"You said it got shot at."

"It wasn't technically mine."

"You've been squatting?" John didn't know why he wasn't more surprised.

"Squatting might not be the word I'd use."

"What word would you use?"

"I think 'prolonged burglary' would be more accurate."

"Dear God."

Sherlock suddenly got up and walked across the room towards the bar, where he stood for a moment without even trying to attract the bartender's attention in the crowd. He then returned empty-handed and sat back down.

"What did you do?" John asked, alarmed. Something did not feel right.

"I found us somewhere to stay tonight."

"What did you do? What's that?" He pointed to Sherlock's pocket. He removed his hand to show that it was empty. "No, in the _pocket_, not the hand."

He pulled up a small phial, not unlike the one he usually kept his cocaine in, but this contained pills.

"What is that? Did you put that in someone's drink?"

"It's two milligrams of flunitrazepam, and I put it in _her_ drink," he said and pointed over to a moderately attractive girl in her late twenties.

John felt his stomach knot up. "Flunitraz-…You roofied her? Please tell me you're joking."

"Get your coat," Sherlock instructed, but John couldn't move. He buried his face in his hands and sat frozen at the table.

"Why on earth would you do something like that? Is that what you were stopping off to get?"

"We needed somewhere to stay the night!"

"I thought you had a flat!"

"I don't, but now we have somewhere to stay. Come on, she's nearly finished her drink. We have to leave before her, people never think they're being followed if you get there before them."

"They never… Do you mean you've done this before?"

"Never with her," was Sherlock's only response, as though that made everything better. "Come on!"

John didn't know why, but he got his jacket and followed Sherlock out of the bar and walked half a block away.

"Why her?" John asked when they saw the girl walk towards them.

"She was stood up by her date and lives just a block away."

"What?"

"She's done her hair, and dressed up, and kept checking her phone. After a while she started drinking at a quicker rate, probably around the time she understood her date wasn't coming. The shoes are worn, but she's clearly not used to wearing heels as high as that, meaning it was one of her first dates in a long while, and she wouldn't have been able to walk very far in them. Did I always have to spell everything out for you?"

The reminder of 'before', the time before… everything, sent a sharp jolt of pain through John's stomach. He'd been trying so hard to block all that out that to remember it, even now when Sherlock was back, was painful.

"Oh," was all he managed to say.

Sherlock suddenly nudged John to start walking, and they began walking around five paces in front of the woman. This did not feel right.

"You're not going to… do anything to her, right?" John asked after a few yards of hearing the stumbling of high heels right behind them.

"What?" Sherlock asked shocked, looking down at John as though it was _he_ who was the weird one.

As the sound of the heels stopped, they slowed down dramatically. There was an inexpert rattling of keys in a lock, and Sherlock started to very slowly walk backwards, pulling John with him, until they were level with the woman struggling with the keys. She was clearly not feeling great, and after repeatedly dropping her keys, Sherlock swooped in and caught her under the arm before she finally slumped against the wall. The door was unlocked.

"Get the keys, John," he whispered as he 'helped' the woman inside.

After checking her wallet for the name, Sherlock found which flat was hers, and let them in, dumping the weight of the woman onto John. The flat was very small, but nicely decorated; it clearly belonged to someone who knew a thing or two about interior design. John would have been impressed, had not that someone been hanging limply from his arms.

"Her bed is through there," Sherlock instructed, pointing further into the flat. John dragged her through, and put her on the well-made bed. After removing her shoes, he covered her with a blanket from the foot of the bed and closed the door behind her. She looked very peaceful. Of course she looked peaceful, John wanted to scream at himself, she's just had two milligrams of Rohypnol.

When he got back into the main room, Sherlock had already stretched himself out on the sofa. John sat down in a large armchair, putting his feet up on a stool. In an interesting reversal of roles, Sherlock was asleep almost as soundly and as quickly as the woman in the bedroom, while John sat wide-awake, staring into space. What the fuck had they just done? Why on earth had he gone along with it? Why hadn't he stopped it? They could've gone to a hotel! This was just so wrong that he didn't even find the words for it. He was starting to feel sick. The knots in his stomach were even tighter than before.

He wasn't that plagued by their criminal activity that he couldn't be distracted by his own mounting domestic problems. The last thought that crossed his mind before he too drifted off to sleep was that he had a lot of things to try to smooth over with Olivia in the morning.


	11. Loose Strings

**Chapter 11: Loose Strings**

John was still yawning and trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes as he drowsily followed Sherlock through the surprisingly empty streets of London soon after half past six in the morning. Never before had he thought he'd use the description 'peaceful' for this city, but then again he'd very rarely been walking around it this early.

They'd left the young woman's flat just as they'd found it, long before she'd wake up, and to Sherlock it seemed as normal as checking out of a hotel. John, on the other hand, had started feeling a strange guilt-mingled fondness for the woman whose name he didn't know. He felt sorry for her for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but also because she'd been stood up, which he didn't think she deserved. She was pretty, and judging by the contents of her bookshelf, fairly clever. She deserved much better, in so many ways. But he quickly managed to push her out of his mind, and it went surprisingly easy.

"Breakfast?" asked Sherlock without slackening his pace.

"I'm starving. Is anywhere open this early?"

Apparently, somewhere was. It was a greasy café catering mainly to builders shipped in to work somewhere in the city, but while Sherlock and John attracted attention by not belonging to the morning regulars, the man behind the counter was more than happy to serve them some very strong tea and beans on toast.

"You're not eating?" asked John when he'd almost finished and Sherlock hadn't even touched his food.

"Never when I'm working."

Of course. Had it really been long enough for John to forget that?

"Then why on earth did you order it?"

Sherlock looked up, slightly surprised. "Not ordering attracts attention."

"No, not eating food you've ordered and paid for is what attracts attention."

He mulled this over for a second. Then, to John's great surprise, he grabbed his knife and fork and started to eat, very slowly. Had John actually been able to reason with him?

"So it's not going to slow you down?" John asked, trying desperately to fight off the smirk he could feel building up inside him.

Sherlock looked up from the food he was clearly not enjoying in the least. "But you told me to –"

"No, I did, and I'm right," John said quickly and scraped his own plate to set an example. "As your GP, I think that –"

Sherlock shot him an angry glance.

John snorted and drank up the rest of his tea, and for good measure, he swilled Sherlock's as well. In the bright morning sunlight he realised that this was the first time in years he'd seen Sherlock during the day, and it was slightly jarring. The dark, short hair was speckled with grey hairs, and he'd looked slightly ill. It wasn't immediately apparent that he'd lost weight, since he'd not had too much to lose, but he noticed the prominent collarbones between the two open buttons of his shirt, and that his skin didn't look pale as much as sallow. Going into diagnosis mode, he turned to his hands. The nails were flaking and brittle and the skin was very dry. He recognised the symptoms immediately: Sherlock was malnourished.

"Have you been eating at all lately?" he asked, trying to sound as off-hand as possible, but he could feel that his eyebrows were drawing into a frown. When he put two and two together, it seemed obvious that this was what would happen eventually. Sherlock had never been one for food, and without John reminding him when to eat and making sure there was always something at home, it was clear that he would go days on end without eating. And of course, cocaine rarely improved appetite…

"No," Sherlock said with his mouth full of food.

"You really should, you know."

Sherlock didn't answer, but he kept eating. He clearly didn't eat because he was hungry or was enjoying the cheap canned beans; he was only eating because John had told him. This was fine with John though – the important thing was that he was eating.

"Now what?" John asked when Sherlock finally pushed the empty plate away from him.

"We're going after Moran."

"Oh, I see. So I'll just call Olivia and tell her I'll be home in time for lunch, shall I? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I need my life back," Sherlock said with a desperation that made John swallow hard.

"I know you do."

"No, you don't. I _need_ my old life back. I need it _now._ Not in a few days, not in a couple of weeks – now. And for that to happen, Moran needs to die."

"I know, you told me. But how do you suggest we do that? I'll help you; you just have to tell me what to do. Do you know where Moran is? How we can find him?"

* * *

Two hours later, John was starting to regret that he hadn't added any preconditions to his offer of help. He was standing with arms outstretched in his pants and socks while an old Italian man was making tiny adjustments to a jacket Sherlock had picked out. There was something in his smug smile as he watched John's humiliation that he had a feeling was mirroring his own smirk when he'd forced Sherlock to eat.

"I really don't understand why I need to play dress-up," he said for what felt like the hundredth time.

"It's not dress-up, it's a disguise."

"And what am I supposed to be disguised as? A prat?"

"No, your supposed to look like someone with a lot of money and taste."

"So I'm dressing up as your brother?"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and did not look amused.

"I have a suit, you know."

"Yes, I know. That's why you need a new one. You're dressing up as a potential investor. That way, you won't have to find Moran – he'll find you. Also, this puts you under the radar."

"So he's in need of money?"

"For some reason, people often are."

"And you're not?"

Sherlock flipped through the paper he was reading and pretended not to have heard.

"Weren't you a squatter up to a few days ago?"

The tailor stopped for a second and looked over his shoulder at Sherlock, clearly a bit uneasy. Sherlock either didn't notice or didn't care.

John's phone started ringing, and he edged over to his trousers, while the tailor followed with his pin-cushion. The display showed Olivia's smiling face from a vacation in France they'd taken a year ago, but he felt pretty confident that she wasn't smiling now. He braced himself and accepted the call.

"Hello, honey," he started tentatively.

"You're an asshole. You know that, don't you?" asked Olivia sharply on the other end of the line.

"Yes, I know that," John sighed in a resigned voice. He'd learnt the hard way that this was a rhetorical question and not one he should try to answer properly. It was always best to just agree.

"Well, admittance is the first step," she said and John got the very distinct impression that she might at least not be scowling. "Look, John, I…"

"I'm so sorry about everything," John interjected quickly. Even though she didn't seem as mad as he'd feared (or thought she might have cause to be), he knew that he had a great deal to make up for.

"I know all this must be hard for you," she said in the calm, adult voice she usually adopted when she was forcing herself to be reasonable and accepting. "But I feel that I might need some space, away from you. And I think you might need some space away from me, as well, so you can focus on your friend."

In spite of how easy it had been to leave her at the restaurant, and to go off with Sherlock instead of pleading with her, John knew that he couldn't just let go of Olivia to go into a sunset of adventure with Sherlock. He really did love her, and she really seemed to love him too.

"I'm going to stay at my mum's, just for a couple of days. Just to give you some time to catch back up, and for me to think things through. But I'll see you when I come back?"

"Of course you will!" John said, feeling infinitely grateful.

Sherlock, on the other hand, had folded his arms and was rolling his eyes as though they'd been talking for hours and they were going through the 'you-hang-up-no-you-hang-up' conversation of teenage love.

"I've made the bed in the guest room."

"Thank you." John wanted to say something more, a lot more, but it felt that everything he wanted to say somehow would just end up being several more 'thank-yous'.

"You're welcome."

With that, she hung up.

John stood for a few seconds, just staring at the phone as the screen went black. All of a sudden, standing in his pants, being fitted for a suit he didn't want, with a deranged friend he hadn't met for three years didn't seem like the obvious choice anymore.

* * *

A couple of hours later, the two of them were sitting in John's kitchen, on either side of the kitchen table overlooking the street below, but neither of them were watching the life going on outside. John was marvelling at how out-of-place they both looked at the moment, both dressed in suits that cost far more than what John was comfortable with. Sherlock didn't really fit in a house as ordinary as this, and he kept looking around with a slightly bemused face. He didn't say anything though, but he clearly thought John had been making some questionable life decisions – he was a worse snob than he would ever let on.

"Can I take this off now?" asked John, starting to peel off the jacket. Sherlock had forced him to wear the suit from the tailor's when it was ready, and his normal clothes were bundled into a plastic bag in the corner.

"No," said Sherlock quickly and crossed his legs.

"But it's not comfortable."

"It will be soon."

This was the exact argument he'd used to get him to wear the suit out of the store, but John had thought it was just snobbishness.

"I really don't think this will ever be comfortable," John muttered and leaned back on his chair.

"You will need this," said Sherlock and slid a gun across the kitchen table.

It looked almost surreal, the silenced handgun on his water-stained breakfast table (it was from Ikea if he remembered correctly).

"I already have a gun," was all he could answer. The whole thing felt so surreal that his mind was going blank time and time again.

"I know, so this one they won't be able to trace back to you."

John looked at the gun. It was a small Bersa pistol, quite expensive. He grasped the grip and looked at it closer.

"Will I need this?" he asked and unscrewed the silencer. He hated silencers. They filled him with a sadness brought on by years of TV-violence, where silenced guns made a smooth _zip_ sound, almost like a laser gun. That's not at all what they did in real life. In reality they pretty much only made it possible to shoot in close quarters without rupturing your eardrums. But it was a messy to shoot someone, and anything that gave you an incentive to do so more often, with less consideration for your own safety was to be avoided. For the first time in months, if not years, he got a tiny flashback from Afghanistan. It was just a fragment of a flashback – an image and a smell: The smell of hot metal from an automatic gun that had just finished far too many rounds, and the image of blood trickling down in the small patch of exposed skin he could see between the other soldier's helmet and collar line. Ruptured eardrums were not a pretty business, but he was still not going to use the silencer.

"No," Sherlock answered with an unswerving calm.

For some reason, John didn't put the silencer back on the table, but in his pocket. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the old 'better safe than sorry' was ringing.

* * *

**A/N: **The next chapter, Mr Suave (another Bruiser reference, sorry about those...) is going to be pretty long, so there's a risk I won't manage the weekly installments I was going for when I picked this back up. But keep an eye out for it next Tuesday morning!


	12. Mr Suave

**Chapter 12: Mr Suave**

Everything had gone completely to hell. John was running as fast as his legs could carry him through the corridors of the empty building. Somewhere up there, Sherlock was still inside. His heart was pounding hard enough to physically hurt with each beat as he climbed yet another staircase, taking three steps at a time. How could it all have gone so wrong?

* * *

Three hours earlier, John had been ushered into the taxi that had pulled up in front of his front door. Sherlock's instructions had been very clear: "Find Moran, don't let him out of your sight, and kill him before he kills me." He should have known that this information would be nowhere enough, but thought that Sherlock always had a reason for doing what he did. Somewhere deep inside, John still trusted Sherlock in a weird, unconditional way he couldn't even begin to understand, let alone explain.

The instructions were simple enough, but already as the taxi rolled away, he was starting to see the gaps. If this was in fact a clever sniper in hiding, just waiting for the right moment to kill Sherlock, wouldn't it seem a bit suspicious if John all of a sudden went around asking for him? And Sherlock's reasoning sounded even more ridiculous: that Moran would approach John if he just played it cool. John swallowed hard, trying to rid himself of the lump in his throat as the car drove across Vauxhall Bridge. On his right side was the MI6 building and in spite of everything, he felt a his lips twitch a little at the thought that Mycroft could be in there at this very moment, not knowing that John had finally found Sherlock again.

His phone vibrated once in his pocket. A text. He extricated it and braced himself for an angry message from Olivia, but it wasn't, it was from Sherlock.

_Your name is Ralph Mondale. SH._

* * *

On the third floor of the empty house, John started seeing signs that he wasn't the first one there. There were footprints in the thick layer of dust on the floor. He picked up his pace even more, and a weirdly calm thought fought its way through his panicked state of mind: Sherlock had been right, the suit actually felt quite comfortable now, or at least he didn't notice it anymore.

A heavy thud came from right above his head. No gunshot, though. Was it Sherlock's body hitting the floor? No, he concluded finally, it had sounded far too heavy to be Sherlock's body – or was that just wishful thinking? Damn it, why did everything have to end up with John running? He wasn't built for this life anymore… And now he would have to find another staircase to take him even further up into the empty house.

* * *

The taxi had rolled up in front of a very large building in Pimlico. It looked more like a hotel than anything else, and a very expensive one at that. John was suddenly thankful for the suit, no matter how uncomfortable it was. He got out and paid the cabbie before walking up the steps to the door. As he reached for the handle, the door swung open, and revealed a hallway covered with a deep red wallpaper and modern art that in the dim light looked pitch black. It was a well-dressed young woman who'd opened the door, and she signed for John to walk inside. He quickly found his feet again and walked into the building, trying hard to look completely at ease.

"May I take your coat?" the young woman said politely, as though explaining a protocol that wasn't normally required to be spoken aloud in this establishment. "I didn't quite catch your name."

"Ralph Mondale," John answered quickly as he took off his coat and handed it to the woman. She tried hard to keep the same neutral expression on her face, but it was clear that this name had opened a metaphorical door for John. She folded his coat across her arm and calmly walked ahead in the long corridor. John couldn't help letting his eyes trail down to her long legs and high heels as she kept swaying her hips almost hypnotically on her way down the hallway. Get it together, he snapped at himself.

The hallway opened up into a very large, high-ceilinged room, where the walls were covered with panelling and the windows framed by heavy curtains that probably were drawn during the day, but now only showed a darkened park or garden behind the house. The walls were still the same dark red colour as in the hallway, but the furniture was very modern and minimalist. The lamps looked more like light installations than anything, and in the corner there was a long, modern bar made from concrete and steel piping – the kind you could get a plumber to do in a weekend, but here was made by designer or architect.

What was this place? From the inside it didn't look like any hotel lobby John had ever been to before, there was no reception first of all, and the people lounging around the casually scattered tables looked far too much at home. Was it a club? He'd thought clubs had been completely obsolete until he'd seen Mycroft's, but this looked nothing like it.

Whatever it was, it was a terrible place to hide out. The only word he could find for it all was ostentatious, and that was not something that worked with the image he'd drawn up of Moran. Sherlock sure knew how to describe someone without even tangentially touching upon what was in fact relevant.

John looked around the room, trying to look as though he was there all the time, and that this place in no way impressed him. Anyone of these men could be Moran for all he knew, and he didn't know anything about how he looked. How should he start trying to find him? The young woman, his only clue to how to behave, had absconded with his coat, so deciding that this was a club, he adopted the only behaviour he could connect with clubs and decided to stay completely quiet. Slowly, he took a few steps towards the bar – it felt like a natural first goal. Maybe the barman (or was this one of those places where they preferred to be called 'mixologists'?) could give him some hint about Moran.

As he looked around the room, he was almost surprised by how little attention he attracted. No one turned to look; no one seemed to think him an intruder in any way. John straightened up a little and took a deep breath to calm his beating heart.

"Mr Mondale?" asked a very polite voice from somewhere on John's right. He turned to look and saw a man standing at the bottom of a staircase, clearly having hurried down the stairs.

"Yes," John answered, uncertain about who was supposed to be subservient to whom.

"It's a true pleasure to finally meet you," the man said and quickly walked across the room, holding his hand out. Apparently, John (or rather, Ralph Mondale) was the top dog. He stood up a little straighter.

John shook his hand. Was this the man who'd take him to Moran? On whose side was he? Was he someone Sherlock had bought?

"Ralph Mondale," John introduced himself to the man.

"Sebastian Moran," the man answered with a wide, charming smile.

John had to remind himself to let go of his hand after the acceptable amount of time. Even though he'd not spent far too much time thinking about Moran, John was now forced to concede that he had had been completely wrong about him. He'd imagined some scarred former IRA operative, a warrior past his prime. A warrior having failed adjusting to civilian life, trying to apply the rules of war on everyday life. Now, shaking hands with a very handsome, smiling man in his mid to late 30's, John realised that he'd been projecting a version of himself on a name. He looked completely comfortable in this environment, as though he came with the house. He, just like the entire Holmes family, seemed to have been born to wear a suit. But, as opposed to the Holmes family, Moran struck John as… he couldn't find another word for it, but a people person. He was smiling, laid-back and seemed to exude a natural charisma.

"I heard you were a veteran as well," Moran said, trying to strike up a conversation.

'As well'?

"Yes," John said uncertainly. He didn't want to expand, because he felt that if he answered honestly, it might lead him into a compromising position.

"Ah," Moran said with a smile. "I was in Afghanistan myself."

"For how long?"

"A week would be long enough, right?"

John snorted. "That's truer than I'd like to admit."

"I was there four years before I got invalided home. Nothing horrendous, of course," he added quickly, as though John might judge him unfavourably for being injured. "I got shot and punctured a lung, quite simple stuff, but managed to contract every possible complication in the book, so they sent me home for treatment."

For a second, John wondered in panic if he'd met or even treated Moran during his time in Afghanistan, but it sounded like a patient he would have remembered. Or at least the name would ring a bell if he'd been such a complicated patient.

"How about you?"

"I prefer not to talk about it," John said curtly.

"Of course not," Moran said quickly, trying to make a recovery. "I know I got it easy. I assume you'd like to see the tables?"

Tables? John didn't know what he was talking about, but he was inviting John to climb the staircase he'd just come down. It felt like it wouldn't be too hard to stay close to Moran, who seemed at least as interested in staying close to Ralph Mondale.

* * *

Before he'd managed to find the stairs, John heard a shot echo through the house and stopped cold. The shot had been fired far away, not right above him now. Had he been running the wrong way? Had it even been in the same house? It had sounded almost too far off. He wanted to call out for Sherlock, just to hear that he was alive, and where to go, but managed to keep his mouth shut. Instead, he turned around and started running back the way he came, heading for the sound of the gun.

He kicked himself mentally when he realised that if he'd taken a right instead of a left when he'd come up from the last flight of stairs, he'd come right to the next one. He ran up it, feeling his legs burn with each step. As he reached the landing he could hear sounds from behind a closed door just ahead of him.

* * *

John was given a complete tour of the premises, and the picture of who Moran was only became more fascinating with each new thing he learned. This establishment was apparently one of two in London, and was a sort of combined club and casino. The top floor was entirely devoted to a number of card-games, and there was even a kitchen with a number of chefs, and a dining room for the guests who wanted to stay playing for most of the night. While never mentioning any numbers, it was clear that this was a very profitable organisation. Could this man possibly be the ruthless assassin Sherlock had been hiding from all these years? It was clear that the operation was run either completely secretly, or with the help of bribes to a number of important people. The latter did undeniably seem more likely.

"Would you like to play a few rounds?" Moran asked after the tour was complete.

"I'm not a gambling man," John said shortly. He liked the character he'd carved out for himself, and liked watching Moran trying to impress him, while withholding his approval. The more he played hard to get, the more Moran tried to impress him.

"But you want to invest in card clubs?"

John froze. He'd been feeling too cocky. Damn it. Could he save this somehow?

"Yes," he said in the same cold voice as before.

"Then you are either the best of the worst businessman I've ever met," Moran said with a smile.

"Is that a compliment or an insult?" John asked, trying to win ground again.

"A compliment, of course," Moran laughed. "But if you don't want to play, maybe we should find somewhere quiet to talk about practicalities?"

"Yes, thank you."

As he was led towards a more secluded part of the second floor, he started to feel a bit uneasy about Sherlock. He had given up most of his life in order to get at this man, while at the same time staying out of his way, and Moran himself didn't seem to lose any sleep over Sherlock. He was more concerned with his gambling places, while Sherlock was struggling to find somewhere to sleep each night, and not eating. From this angle it didn't seem like there was any doubt who had come out on top after these three years.

As he was being led into a beautiful conference room, he got a sudden feeling that this was where he'd kill Moran. But as the room was closed from the inside by a very large guard, and two more where posted outside the door, that thought quickly faded away.

"Is that really necessary?" asked John, nodding towards the guard by the door.

"Yes, from experience I have to admit that it is quite necessary," Moran said and sat down at the head of the table. John sat down at the corner next to him. "Why?"

There was nothing overtly suspicious in Moran's question, and John felt comfortable that his cover wasn't blown, but it was clear that Moran actually wanted to know why he was asking about the guards.

"Is it a big expense, the guards?" John expanded, trying to sound as professional as possible.

"Yes," Moran said with a sigh. "You can try all you want to make these places inaccessible to the riffraff, but this remains a place where the clients don't wear jeans, but do carry knives."

John didn't answer.

"Are you armed, by the way?" Moran asked, as relaxed as if asking about the weather.

John clenched his jaw as he tried to think of his next move. He could say no, and that would be the end of it. He could also say no, only to later be frisked, and the gun discovered and he'd be thrown out, if not killed. Without knowing why he was asked, he found no other way out than the truth.

"Yes," he said, trying to stay as calm as possible as he removed the Bersa from the holster inside his jacket. He put it on the table. He held his breath as Moran's eyes fell on the gun.

"Sensible man. I like that," Moran said with an approving smile.

John had never been more relieved that he had removed the silencer beforehand: that would have been a lot more difficult to explain if he tried to claimed to have the gun for protection.

A phone ran, and John immediately recognised his signal, and began looking through his pockets, praying to god that it wasn't Olivia.

"Sorry, that's me," Moran said quickly and fished up his own phone and answered.

John had just managed to get his own phone out and checked the time. A quarter to ten. Half past nine was the time they had decided that Sherlock would try to attract Moran's attention, so the call had to be about that. By Moran's intently concentrated face, John felt sure it was.

"I see," he said quietly into the phone. "No, quite right."

John tried to look as calm as possible as he tried to listen in on the conversation. Moran looked terribly conflicted, torn between the possibility of a good business deal, and the possibility of revenge. John prayed to god that the urge for revenge would be stronger.

"Send a car there. Three men, at least. Take care of it," he said finally.

John felt his body grow cold. It dawned on him with painful clarity that Sherlock had completely misread the situation. This wasn't a matter of loyalty to Moran, this wasn't about revenging Moriarty – Sherlock was just another job he just wanted to finish. As long as Sherlock was alive, the job wouldn't be finished, but this was not personal to Moran. And three people? Could Sherlock really handle that in his present state? John had to get out of there, had to go help him.

"Terribly sorry about that," Moran said as he disconnected the call and put the phone on the table. "Some people just don't know when it's acceptable to call."

"I have a friend like that as well."

John swallowed hard. He needed to wrap this up.

"As I'm sure you understand, I wouldn't want to discuss the particulars of a potential investment with a lawyer present."

Moran didn't manage to hide his disappointment. "I see."

"Especially when you're talking about sums are considerable as this," John added quickly, and the disappointment quickly vanished.

Moran's phone rang again, and John felt a burgeoning panic in his chest. What were they going to say? That the job was done? No, it hadn't been more than a minute.

"Yes?" he asked impatiently. "I'm in a meeting. No. Of course not. Just… take care of it! How hard can it be? Well, just give me a moment." He hung up the phone and put it back in his pocket. "It seems that this might be a good place to wrap things up for me as well."

"I see," was all John managed to say.

"If you want something done right, you better do it yourself, am I right?"

"Quite."

John felt his own phone vibrate in his pocket.

"Excuse me," he said as he picked it up.

_Don't let him out of your sight. Ecclestone Square Mews. SH._

"Do you think you could order me a taxi?" John asked, playing for time.

"Of course. Matthew, could you make sure Mr Mondale gets a taxi?" Moran told the guard as he moved towards the door.

John grabbed his gun from the table and was about to put it back in its holster, when he froze. Could he possibly take down Moran and shoot his way out? He looked from Moran to the guard, and thought about the two outside. He could possibly kill the guard and then Moran, unless Moran had a gun on him, but then what? He couldn't just jump out of the window and vanish into the night. The other guards, who most certainly were armed, would be in the room in only a few seconds, and John would be dead within another few seconds. No, there was no way. He took a deep breath and reluctantly removed his fingers from the grip of the pistol. How was he supposed to be able to stick to Moran if he was going away?

As he followed the guard called Matthew back down the stairs, away from Moran, he felt all the self-control he'd amassed for this slip through his fingers. He felt an almost irresistible urge to go for his gun, but by putting his hands in his pockets instead he was physically able to restrain himself.

"Where do you want to go?" asked Matthew, reaching for a phone from behind the bar and dialling a number.

"Ecclestone Square Mews," John said without thinking. He had far too much other stuff on his mind to think up a new address on the spot.

"Really? But that's just a block or two away. You just go down Warwick way, and then its down to your left."

"Oh, it's that close, is it?" John tried to sound pleasantly surprised. "Then I just might take a walk there instead. Thank you for your help."

As John found himself moving out of the club, away from Moran, a sudden realisation hit him. If he didn't kill Moran, Moran would kill Sherlock, and he would lose Sherlock again, but this time permanently. Sherlock would be dead, and there would be nothing in the world to bring him back. It felt like being very rudely awakened from a dream that was just beginning to get good. As he felt adrenaline pumping in his veins, the role of Ralph Mondale was slipping off him like a mask, and he left it entirely as he felt the cool night air through the front door that was being held open for him.

He'd done the one thing he wasn't allowed to do – he'd let Moran out of his sight, and he hadn't killed him, and now both he and Sherlock were in danger. However, he put his one hope to the fact that the address was close, and Moran couldn't have had too much of a head start.

He picked up his pace to a brisk jog.

Cars kept rolling past him on the street, but none of them looked like they might contain Moran. John kept jogging. Suddenly, a silver car sped past him and made a very narrow turn down a small street that only seemed to lead to a dead end. John fell into a straight-out run as soon as the car was out of view. It had turned down Eccleston Square Mews.

Every second John was running put Moran closer to Sherlock, and gave Moran another second to set his aim and get ready for the perfect shot. This triggered a massive release of adrenaline, and John sped up further.

* * *

Drawing his gun, John ran towards the closed door, his steps muffled by the thick layer of dust on the floor. He thought he would have to ram it in with his shoulder, but as he made contact with it, it swung open.

* * *

**A/N:** Now I love the fanon Moran as much as the next girl, but I love canon Moran even more, so I decided to mix them a bit. But I know that my Moran isn't strictly kosher in either direction, sorry.


End file.
